


Finding Hope

by nevadafighter



Series: Drifter No More [4]
Category: Laramie (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-07-25 09:11:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 64,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7526869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevadafighter/pseuds/nevadafighter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two men go on a journey to find the one thing they missed most.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stop, Thief!

**Author's Note:**

> This story is placed in infiniterider's wonderful [Drifter No More](http://archiveofourown.org/series/87643) universe, some years down the line. The boys are always so sweet and their love is so real, and, well, I felt like torturing them for a while. YAY!

The pounding of Dawn's hooves matched the pounding beat of Slim Sherman's heart. _I'm too old for this._ The thought was half hearted - he wasn't old, not just yet. But the days of hard riding and wild living were long gone. Times had changed. The frontier had pushed further west, and Laramie was supposed to have law and order on its side. He'd grown soft and comfortable, happy to split his life with Jess, fifty-fifty, all the way down the line. There wasn't supposed to be any more of this chest squeezing, palm sweating, bone jarring chasing. They were supposed to be preparing for old age.

 _Please let me be wrong, please let me be wrong..._ The tracks seemed to stretch on forever. _Let me be right, let me be **right**._ There was no sign of a rider, save the fresh tracks in the supple spring earth. _Please, please, please..._ The sun was high overhead, and it beat down on Slim's back. He should have taken his vest. The old cotton shirt he wore was threadbare, not fit for hard riding. It was a shirt for the days he had chow duty, a shirt to keep decent in and no more. The kind of shirt that kept a man from getting too sweaty over a stove, that let him greet hungry stagecoach passengers without too much fuss. It wasn't a shirt to go chasing after a crazed man with a thorn in his side and his trusted sawed off six shooter in his hand. 

_Why, Jess, **why?**_

Slim knew why. In his younger days, right after the war, he might have done the same reckless, foolish thing himself. But that was before he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, a brother to protect, and then an orphan boy, and then, finally, this life he'd carved out of the Wyoming wild. And really, that life was why he was riding his beautiful gray mare down to the ground, why sweat and dirt ran in his eyes and clung to his skin, why his breath came in harsh papery rasps. This last act of wild insanity was his last bid at protecting the only thing left that mattered - bring Jess back safe. Hang the savings. Hang the bank's transfer. Hang the damned thieving girl, if that's really what she was. Hang it all, just get Jess back safe and sound.

The thought of Jess whole and warm in his arms was less a distraction than it was a beacon of hope. Better to think of him sleepy eyed and rosy cheeked, his hair sticking to moist skin as he snuffled deep in the covers, than to think even of the steel jawed, ball fisted man who'd stalked off to change the teams just before lunch. 

_"I don't like it, Slim. If that girl's so hurt she ain't got no business on a ranch with a couple of old cowboys."_

_"She's got nowhere to go, Jess - no one knows her, and she doesn't remember anything. We can't just toss her to the folks in town and expect them to care for her, not if we're the ones who found her."_

_"And why not? There's a doctor in town, and more important, the law! It's better for her and us!"_

_"Just how's she gonna pay for a room in town, Jess? Especially since there's plenty of room here with Mike g-"_

_"The lady should be in town - hell, ** **I'll**** pay the hotel bill, if that's what it'll take-"_

_"We're not turning Hope out, and that's final!"_

_"...sure, Slim. Your sayin' somethin's final makes it so. That's always worked in the past."_

_"I need to cool off. And you've got some anger to work off. Change the teams yourself."_

_"Fine. Somebody oughta keep an eye on the girl anyway."_

Jess had been right. Someone should have been watching Hope. If Slim had just humored Jess and kept his eye on her, she might not have disappeared, and Jess might not have gotten a burr in his saddle, and Slim might not be-

The sound of distant gunfire snapped Slim from his thoughts. _Lord, no._ He pulled up short, nearly as agitated as the horse, and forced himself to silent calm. He laid a soothing hand on her neck, and together they listened, as shots blasted through the brush. 

Straight ahead. The sound was coming from straight ahead, through the brambles and the brush, along the same path that someone in an awful hurry had cut through not more than an hour past. "No..." Slim didn't know what he prayed for, but he prayed hard, and eased Dawn forward. The answers, good or bad, lay ahead.

The mare shied a bit, and Slim stopped her again. The shots had stopped, and the air seemed unpleasantly still. "It's okay, Dawn. It's alright." he said. It felt like a lie, and he hated lying to a horse - they were so much smarter than men, sometimes, and he had no doubt they always knew when their men were trying to tug their blinders too tight. But Slim made himself stay calm - as far as Dawn went, it _was_ okay, or it would be, so long as she didn't throw him and leave him afoot. She settled down, though he could feel through his legs her reluctance to ease up. He clucked her forward, and kept tight hold of the reins and his thoughts. No more trips down memory lane. Follow the path, and then get back home. 

But a plan like that only works when the answers are neat and tidy, and don't raise more questions as they come along. Slim's hopes for simple answers and a quick return died as they approached the edge of the woods. A handsome black stallion came rushing towards them, rampant and wild, and barely hanging onto a saddle that thwacked his rump with every loping step he took. The stallion nearly bowled them over, and the mare reared up herself. Time seemed to slow as the horses danced fearfully around each other, but the sinking feeling in Slim's gut wasn't for himself - it was for the blood on the black stallion's saddle, a saddle Slim knew as well as he knew the stallion itself. 

Finally, Dawn shied back and the stallion returned to its hellbent path. Slim made no effort to turn and give chase. The horse knew the way home, and would be waiting for him when he returned. The new question was, would Slim be able to bring the horse's faithful rider back home with him, and what condition would Jess be in if he did.

Another shot ricocheted through the air - a single shot, one that carried the particular whistle of Jess' pearl handled sawed down six-shooter. The silence that followed was like a heavy leather cloak, stifling and hot. Slim held his breath, trying to hear something, anything, to tell him that Jess was alright and that the fight was over. Instead, the distinctive whistle of Jess' gun ripped through the air again, twice this time, threatening the last of Slim's peace of mind.

He gritted his teeth and swallowed the bile rising in his throat. This was not the time to lose composure. Things had come to a head out in that wild, unfamiliar country, and his partner, his _heart_ , was out there alone, at the end of gunfight. Worst of all, there was no telling from where Slim sat which end of that fight he'd find Jess, save for the blood smeared in his saddle. Slim returned to the tracks, afraid of what he might find, but compelled to find it anyway.

* * *

The surrounding woods soon gave way to open meadow, which quickly turned first sandy, then dry and rocky. As the soft soil hardened under the mare's hooves, the trail disappeared almost entirely. Slim was left with a wide, brown vista that spread out in front of him like the sky. He'd never seen the ocean, but he'd read about it, plenty, and Andy had once sent word all the way from New York, telling him that yes, the ocean was everything all those writers said, and more. Andy had likened it unto the predawn sky, out in the open range, vast and dark and surprising, and too big to hold in the mind or the eye. When Slim asked how that was different from the range itself, or maybe a daytime sky, Andy's cryptic response was, _"But you can see the end of the sky. It ends at the ground. And you can see the end of the range. It ends at the sky. The ocean doesn't ever end. Even when it touches the sky, it doesn't end."_ The answer made no sense, and Jess had decided that Andy must have been drunk when he'd written that slop.

But out here, in this particular open field, in a place unfamiliar to Slim, with his whole world at stake, he began to understand maybe just what Andy meant. The range was something known, something they'd dealt with all their lives. It was a living, breathing thing, and it was more often kind to the Shermans than it was deadly. The ocean, though, that was something else. It could pull a man down and take him from this life in an instant, if the stories were to be believed. It was too big to fight, too big to tame, too big to do anything but pray for mercy. 

_Mercy, mercy, mercy..._

The view didn't stretch on entirely unbroken. There was the treeline behind him, which held the cool moist trails that lead to the safety of home. There were the mountain ranges in the distance, ranges that, though unfamiliar to Slim, were just distinctive enough that he knew he'd be able to make his way back, should he pass through this yawning space in the world. He'd be fine navigating his way back home. How he'd push on, with no more hoof prints to follow, was another matter.

Slim turned and looked at the treeline once more. They'd come out of the wood, thundering hooves, and made it out here somewhere before the shooting began. There were no splintered branches, no bullet holes or ricochet marks to be seen on the path, no blood anywhere. Not anywhere except the blood on Jess' saddle. 

Panic surged through Slim, urgency renewed. No time to think. They'd come barreling out of the wood, full speed ahead alright, and now somewhere up there, Jess might hurt, maybe dying. Slim returned to the woods, retraced the path a few steps, and then spurred Dawn forward, into the great wide open. He had to trust that whatever force it was that brought Jess to his back door all those years ago would reunite them once more.

Though it took several minutes of hard riding, Slim's faith was rewarded - though not in the way he'd wanted. The dry, hard rock might not show a horse's heavy step, but it showed blood, clear as day. Slim dropped down from Dawn to swipe a finger through some of the drops. Mostly dry, but enough moisture to smear the larger bits. Fresh, then. Probably the shots he'd heard. Most likely Jess's blood, though there was nothing to say Hope hadn't gotten it too. Slim wasn't sure which he'd have preferred, but the memory of the blood on Jess' saddle sent a shiver down Slim's sunbaked back.

He stood back and looked at the blood splattered over the ground. Some of the drops were perfect drippings, undisturbed, while others showed clear signs of a struggle. Slim followed the drips to a larger pool of blood. There was a bloody hand print next to it, a large one. Not Hope's hand. Almost certainly Jess', probably trying to get to his feet after whatever it was that put that blood on his saddle and knocked him off his horse. 

Where was he?

Slim walked a wide circle, taking in the lay of the land. They could be anywhere by now, depending on what happened to the other horse, how Jess managed to get pulled from his, and whether or not he'd gotten the damn girl to stop. "Damn it." Slim should have kept his eye on the girl. He should have put her to work in the damned kitchen, and helped Jess change the horses. He should have gone half with Jess to put the girl up in town.

Hell, maybe he should have left her where he'd found her sprawled out on the damn range. Maybe he and Jess would be sitting down together to dinner by now. But what was it that Jonesy often said (and Jess would picked the damnedest times to remember)? No good deed goes unpunished?

Slim paused just before completing his circle. The treeline that marked the wooded area between where ever the hell he was and home was far from where he stood, too far to walk comfortably in good condition in this heat, much less with a leaking bullet hole. But due west, where the sun was already beginning to slope too low in the sky to keep up the search much longer, there was a crisp edge to the land just a little ways over - the plain looked to have a drop off, some kind of cliff, maybe. And a smattering of blood seemed to trail off towards that imagined edge. 

Fear and cautious hope warred for space in Slim's heart as he mounted up and followed the intermittent blood drops. They were so few, Slim wanted to believe that maybe he'd find Jess alive at the end of them. But what if there were so few because there was no blood flowing? Slim shook himself of that - there was no body anywhere out in the open range. Jess made it somewhere, somehow, under his own power. There was no one else out here, and there was simply no way another rider could have shown up to offer aid without Slim noticing. The answer had to be at the cliff line.

* * *

As he drew closer, Slim realized that the sharp edge he'd thought he'd seen wasn't exactly so. The edge dropped off at a steep angle, but the drop wasn't so far that a man couldn't make it down in one piece. There was short, scrubby brush poking out of the side of the glorified hillside, and a few scrawny trees that poked out of the smaller bushes. Through the skeletal brambles Slim could just make out the sparkle of a running stream. If Jess made it this far, and lived, he might not die of thirst. 

The thought was a cold comfort to Slim - the sun was setting quickly, too quickly, and he still hadn't found any sign of Jess beyond that bloodied hand print. He'd have to give up the search soon. The evening stage would be through soon, and the teams would need changing. The drivers would probably want a meal, and that assumed there weren't any passengers to host as well. The stove was cold, the regular ranching chores were abandoned, the horses still needed to be put to pasture for the night... it was an awful lot of work for two men who were accustomed to carrying the load. Alone, Slim was going to have a hard time. _Damn._

He couldn't tell which way the river flowed, but it ran perpendicular to the treeline that marked the prairie, parallel to the trail back home. He could stretch the search out just a little longer if he stayed by the cliff's edge, and followed along towards the woods, before the facing got too high, too dangerous to search along. It felt better than just turning tail and running back home to do a bunch of chores he wouldn't have the heart or stomach for anyway. Besides, he could hear dogs yipping somewhere nearby. He didn't want to leave an injured and helpless Jess at the mercy of some wolf pack after sundown.

Slim was nearly to the end of the walkable edge when he saw them: blood droplets. A winding little trail of them, snaking along as if there were boulders and trees to maneuver around on the way from the bloody fight. Slim shuddered and tried not to be discouraged by Jess' apparent inability to walk a straight line in a open plain. Instead he turned his attention to the cliff's edge, trying to find a sign of Jess' erratic path. The brush remained untouched at the cliff's edge. The blood trail ended without rhyme or reason, save a fine mist left behind on a handful of otherwise unmolested brambles. It didn't make sense, for a man to simply up and disappear - no, wait! A few feet down slope stood the remains of a broken sapling, a reedy thing that looked like it might have snapped under the pressure of a light breeze or a sneeze. Alone, it was insignificant, just more kindling for this arid hillside too high to benefit from the stream below. But the path of crushed bush that continued down the hillside, that was too much to ignore.

And then he saw it. The arms and legs all spread out, like he was set to make a snow angel in the mud. His face was obscured by one of the four hounds that nosed at the splayed out figure, but Slim didn't need to see his face. He recognized the beautiful rust red cowhide chaps, an exorbitantly expensive Christmas gift from Mike, and the old black gloves, the same gloves he'd been wearing when Slim happened upon him by the stream in his back forty. And now here he was, flat on his back, at the edge of a little running creek.

But the blood on his shirt, the blood that was dripping into the soft earth told Slim that Jess Harper wasn't gonna be riding on from this one.

Slim slid down from his mount and walked numbly to the edge of the precipice. The slope wasn't vertical, but it was too steep to get down there safely on his own. And once down there, what next? Jess wasn't a small man, and his deadweight was hard to drag on level ground. Getting him up a half mushy, half powder slope like this one would be next to impossible, and that was without the added puzzle of the dogs. Dogs that sniffed and prodded and yipped noisily at Jess, who lay there, silent and still. Too still. A dry croak scratched it's way out of Slim's mouth, and he choked on it, and tried again. "Jess?" The noise was no louder, and his chest was squeezed so tight he didn't think he could get breath enough to try again. But he did. " _Jess!_ "

The dogs snapped to attention at Slim's cry, and immediately began to snarl and bark at him. He backed away from the edge, partly in fear for himself and his horse, but mostly afraid of what a pack of angry hounds would do to Jess's - to Jess. He needed to get down there, he needed to get Jess up the slope, needed to get him home, where he belonged, where he'd always belonged - 

Just the two of them. It was supposed to be the two of them at last, until their days ran out.

" _No._ "

The ache in his chest was blinding, and Slim went to his knees, hard. Too soon, too soon! He crawled slowly, on shaking hands and knees, back to the edge, and felt the last of his breath die in his throat at the sight. Two of the dogs had hold of Jess by the chaps and gunbelt, and they were dragging him along the stream's shore. A couple more dogs seemed to be herding them along, yipping and jumping away, then running back, a dizzying dance of encouragement. And one lone dog stood watch in the place where Jess must have landed, a place marked with his lifeblood. The sentinel dog growled low at Slim, who watched the slow progress the rest of the pack made with their prize. His lost angel.

His limbs gave way, and he collapsed. Despair was a slow poison that robbed him of his sight, his movement, his mind. All he could think of was the last thing Jess ever said to him. _Someone ought to keep an eye on the girl anyway._ Not _See you tonight,_ or _Keep the light on,_ or _Okay, Pard._

Not _I love you._

Someone should have kept an eye on the girl.

A soft, warm breath broke through Slim's desolation. Dawn whinnied gently and mouthed his cheek, like a sad mother. _Get up now, Slim,_ she seemed to say. _Time to go home now. The children need tending._ A shaky sob rattled from his chest, just the one, and then he got stiffly to his feet. He felt like he'd aged a hundred years down there on the ground, and maybe he had. "Okay, girl," he said to the horse's warm, velvety muzzle. "We'll go now now." She was patient while he worked his way up the saddle, a task that had never seemed so impossible to him even as a small boy. But his long legs seemed too heavy to lift, his body too tired and achy to heft up into the saddle. She was a good horse, though, steady and patient, and seemed to understand that Slim needed more help than the whole territory probably had in it to give, and so she waited until he was settled before automatically turning away from the awful place that took her master to his knees and beyond, before automatically returning to her home.


	2. Death of a Gunfighter

He was nowhere. 

Thick warmth covered him, buoyed him, held him close in a sea of absolute nothing. Darkness, velvet soft and infinitely seductive, swaddled his very soul. He was alone, the only creature in his tight yet expansive world. From this contradiction sprung another: to want in a place where there was nothing to want, to need in a place where there was nothing to need. He wanted and needed to remain in his cloak of nothing. God, but he didn't want to awaken.

The choice, apparently, was not in his hands. A disruption in the endless soft made itself known, and wended its way to his awareness. At first, he couldn't name the disruption. He couldn't name anything, not the softness, the bliss, or the dark. But he could feel these things, and with it, he could feel the disruption, sure and cold and pale. A marble ghost, come to chip away at his dark.

Chip, chip, chip.

He tried to turn away from the chipping, tried to turn back to the darkness, but the darkness was all around, without a focus to latch onto. The harder he tried to pull away from the chipping, the paler the darkness grew, the stronger and more distinct the chipping was, until it began to form separate concepts in his mind. Scratching. Sniffing. Yipping. 

Sound.

Disappointment weaved through him like a ribbon, slipping silkily through the lace holes in his mind. With it came the faintest awareness of a mind: I think, therefore, I am.

_I am?_

The notion was promptly dismissed, silly and useless. Best to remain in what was left of the dark, hidden away from the slow but sure spread of light. Best not to smell that smell, that godawful smell which had no name, no form. _Sweet almighty, what the devil is that?_

No words. 

Frustration crested, and finally he began to fight the darkness. An answer. He needed an answer, to know what the stench was that'd begun to pull him from the blessed warmth, and into this harsh chill. The answers flitted away, just out of reach, leaving him with little more than the faint whisper of emotion. Later, he'd be able to name the emotions that buried him as quickly as the odors rolled over him, though he'd never be able to pick out any one scent. It didn't matter, though. There wasn't, nor ever would be, any need to do so. In the end, only the emotion mattered, because the emotion was enough to drive him to the surface. 

Filth. Decay.

Death.

_No!_

He choked suddenly, on the smell, on the fear, on the darkness. Just as suddenly, the once-inviting warmth was oppressive, and he shook it off as best he could, fighting for that pale chill. His face - an object that seemed to float to him from nowhere - twitched and spasmed as he fought to move. The effort was colossal, and he began to sweat. The cold drenched him and sent a shiver through him, marking the length of his body. 

His body. Another object, a separateness from the dark, the warm, the soft. It had weight. It had an end. The end seemed to surround him - he was contained by his body. His body was the darkness. The light was out there, beyond it, and it was digging its cold claws into the soft dark, dragging him out to the open.

* * *

He was birthed into a dirty, stinking room. There were panting, yipping animals, with long snouts and longer tongues. Dogs. Several of them. They nosed at him and made strange little yowling noises once in a while, and walked around his head. He looked up at them, at wooden beams that supported a wooden roof, at rusty looking farm equipment that hung on the walls. He smelled copper and dung, horse and, of course, dog. He was on his back. He didn't want to be on his back. He wanted to get up, find cover. 

He twisted his body, intending to sit up. Searing pain blazed through him, a rip in the universe, the universe that was his body. He flopped back with a gasp, and the dogs began to bark and whine more fitfully. He squeezed his eyes shut, and gasped for breath, breaths that now were impossible to take in. His head spun. The cold bit harder. The copper and shit smell grew stronger. He forced himself to look, to look at his body, to see if he could find the source of pain. 

Blood _everywhere_.

The dogs suddenly let him be, all save one, a big yellow dog that sat on its haunches and stared at the others. The rest of the mutts gathered to bark at a door, a door that let in all the light, a door that faced a muddy looking stream and a beat up, weather rotted wagon. From this open door, new sounds reached his ears, sounds that ought to have made sense, but didn't. Some kind of animal, a mating call maybe, back and forth they went. A pair of them, he thought, talking to each other, like they could understand one another. But maybe they could. Maybe he was the one who couldn't catch the meaning of their sounds.

No words.

His gut burned. A sound formed deep in his throat, swelled and gathered force in his mouth, and reached his ears slow and shaky. He sounded like the animals outside, the ones calling back and forth to one another. They'd gone silent. The dogs were agitated all over, shaking and warbling.

Or maybe he was shaking all over. He didn't know. He didn't know anything but the pain in his belly.

A moment later, he didn't even know that. 

He was nowhere. 

* * *

The return to the light was no easier the second time around. It carried a new sheen, something slick and waxen, furred at the edges.

Something cold touched his face. Gratitude melted from his pores, dripped down his face, soaked his clothes. So hot, so unbearably hot.

"-water on no gunslinger!"

Gunslinger.

"-bein a old fool! Plenty a water in the crick!"

Face was hot again. He tried to pull away from the moist heat.

"See there! I'm getting my rifle!"

"Clyde, you cut all that out!"

He tried to open his eyes. They felt like they were sealed shut, pressed together with sap. Nothing made sense. Gunslinger.

"-all we worked for, woman! Now get away from that gunslick!"

His hackles began to rise - there was a gunman? In the room with them? He needed to open his eyes, needed to get a bead on the sidewinder! His hand went for his hip, slow, too slow, like swimming through cold molasses, but if he could just-

"See there! Delirious my eye!" The old man's words came out in a long, loud wheeze.

"Maybe he can hear you, Clyde, you ever thunk a that?"

"He's a killer! Now get back here, Eunice!"

"Tain't Christian to leave him shakin and sufferin that way! And he can't do no harm - look he don't even know he ain't got no gun! He's more afeared a us than we are of him!"

"That's on account a his bein a gunslinger, woman! Prolly lost the gun doing something he ain't had no business doing no ways."

His hand went down. There was no gun in his holster. He was at the mercy of whatever madness came his way. Maybe it would stop the skin melting heat, the ripping pain in his gut.

The cool relief returned, and with it came the certainty that whatever came next, would come without any prompting or interference from him. He was helpless to stop anything, or anyone. 

His eyes slid open. It was easy, like opening a door.

An old woman crouched in front of him. A thought tried to form, an idea of a kind hearted, bustling little lady, but there was nothing. The dust of a notion flitted away on the wind, and left this wizened old thing peering into his face with dark, beady eyes. "Them dogs a yourn ain't supposed to be draggin grown men down the hill, neither, Clyde. What a you gonna do, take em all back and shoot em too?" 

Movement behind the woman drew his attention up to the rifle pointed in his direction. It was held by an old man, older maybe even than the woman - it was hard to tell. They both looked so damned old, it looked like they'd seen the Battle of Lexington together on their honeymoon. The rifle shook in the old man's hands. "Dogs did their job. They kept us safe, ain't they?"

"From him?" The woman plunged her hand into a bucket near her feet, and brought up a cold, wet cloth to swab his still steaming face. "I'm tellin you, yer bein an old fool! Is the knife hot yet?"

"You ain't cuttin nothin outta his belly! You wanna get the preacher man, you can do that."

"Clyde." The woman never stopped tending to his sweltering heat. "Ifn I don't get this thing outta him but soon, I'm gonna need the preacher for _me._ "

The gun lowered, just a touch, but it came right back up again. "Alright. But I'm gettin the sheriff."

"Ain't no time for that."

"Then there ain't nothin for him, and God rest his damnable soul. I'm _gettin_ the _sheriff_."

He tried to speak, tried to protest - what the hell could he do to anyone? He felt hot and sick and his gut felt like a dragon was eating him from the inside out. He couldn't hurt the old folks, even if he'd wanted to. All he could do was moan a little, and even that sounded feeble to his ears. 

"Uh huh. He don't like the idea of the law comin to watch over him! He's a guilty one!" The old man finally took the rifle away, and hobbled over to a corner to rustle around in the equipment.

"Meebe he's just hurtin! Now, wait, Clyde, what's that for?!"

The old man came back into view carrying a long, thick rope in one hand, and the rifle in the other He thrust the rope at the woman. "Tie him up. And keep the gun on him," the old man said.

"Tie - what on earth for?"

"Now, Eunice, you stop arguing with me! You wanna try to save this dirty saddle tramp, alright, I ain't gonna stop ya! But we're gonna be safe about it! And we're gonna save him so's he can answer for whatever he done to land him like this!"

"That ain't right, Cl-"

"I'd rather be wrong, and have you safe and sound, than be a good man what got to bury his one true love. Now tie him up." 

* * *

Time passed slowly. He couldn't judge anything properly, not with the way the world kept floating in and out of his grasp. Twice now he'd awakened to the sight of the old woman pointing that rifle at his face, and twice he'd dropped off the edge again, struggling with some senseless idea of justice and lost time.

This time, he could feel the difference in his mind. There was a madness in him, something wild and glittering, hot and pulsing. He was burning alive, roasting from some fire within. He knew it, and he knew that if he didn't cool off, he'd be consumed, and that would be the end of him. He knew nothing else, not even his name, or if he'd ever had one. It was as if he'd spent his entire life aflame on the dirty straw covered floor of this old barn, and the universe would end the way it began - warm and dark and filled with nothing.

That wasn't right. His was a life full of _something_. He just needed to figure out what the hell that something was. 

He licked dry, cracked lips. His head shook as he tried to lift it off the ground. The rifle seemed to shake, too. _Unsteady gun hands means an unsteady shot. Good._

He didn't know where the thought came from. He didn't know what it meant. He only knew it told him not to fear the gun, or the shivering old woman holding onto it. "Mother," he said. He didn't know why he said it. It just seemed like a good thing to say.

The old woman lowered the gun half a hair. That was her only response.

"Water."

The old woman shook her head slowly. "I'm sorry, sonny. Not until my husband comes back with the Sheriff." The gun moved down another half hair. "When Clyde comes back, then we'll see."

That was the wrong answer. The glittering madness at the edge of his awareness surged, and he tensed. Someone gasped. Might have been him, might have been the old woman. He didn't know, or care. He only that knew he was on fire. Reality fell away as the universe collapsed on him, leaving him alone with the blistering heat.

"You'll tear your wrists open, now!" The old woman's voice came to him from somewhere left of God. A shivering pressure on his arms filtered into his awareness, and he began to feel a separate burning at the end of his sleeves. "Stop, stop." A cool, damp cloth came to his lips, and the tension dropped out of his body as the flames slowly died. Soothing sounds accompanied the soothing moisture on his mouth, and he sucked greedily at the cloth. He closed his eyes, and breathed a sigh of relief as the madness receded. It still lingered, glowered menacingly in the back of his mind, but it was quieter.

"Please." He didn't know what he was begging for, but the old woman seemed to understand. Calloused, leathery hands touched his face lightly, calling to mind a touch from so long ago, a time before he lived, before the barn and the pain and the unending flame. There was a word, not 'Mother,' which had come to him so easily, unbidden, but something... other. He tried to follow the thread of the unspoken thought, but it faded into the mist, leaving behind only this strange old woman who touched him with gnarled but gentle hands. "Please," he said again, as she began peeling away the dirty, crusty strips of cloth that still clung to his body.

Before she could do more than cluck piteously at his bloodied, muddied body, the barn door whipped open with a slam. The old man came stalking into the barn, breathing like a wild stallion. The old woman jumped and turned to look at her husband for a moment, before returning to her task of soothing, cooling touch. The old man stalked slowly towards the two of them as if they were conspiring against him. "What in tarnation are you doin', woman?"

"I'm cleaning him up, Clyde." She seemed unfazed by his slow, meanacing approach. "This young man needs our help," she said, with the finality of a woman used to her husband's hollering.

"He's a stranger!"

"We've been all through that. Where's the sheriff?"

The old man actually growled. "He's a damned fool - says I'm paranoid!" The old woman sniffed, and began poking at something sharp, painful, and dizzying. Through the sudden hurt, the old man's voice came down from some wide open field. "Don't you laugh at me, Eunice! How could you laugh at a time-"

"Oh, pipe down, Clyde, no one is laughing at you! I just think you're being a bitter old fool, is all!"

"Well, how can you blame me!" 

The gnarled old hands stilled on his sick and razed belly, and he forced himself to focus on the old woman's - Eunice's - face, and on the old man's - Clyde's - balled fists. He didn't want to slip back into the darkness again. "No one is blaming you for anything, Clyde. But... he didn't do it." The sound of heavy breathing filled the room. Eunice cleared her throat. "What about the doc?"

Clyde's response was a touch softer. "He ain't comin' neither." When his wife turned to look at him, the old man's hackles rose again. "Well what do you expect me to do about it? The Jordans and the Whinninghams got the flu, and the sheriff says its been goin' around something fierce!"

"So the law ain't comin, and neither is no help? That's it. Go git the water boiling."

"Now, wait just a minute, woman-"

"He's fever-sick! If I'm gonna save this boy, I got to do it _now_ , Clyde."

Clyde shook his head and stooped down, just out of line of sight. When he straightened up, he had the abandoned rifle, and held it with steady hands. "Ain't nobody saving nobody - and that ain't no boy. He's older than Gilbert was when-" The old man's voice cracked. "Sheriff said to do what I gotta, to protect m'family. That's you."

Eunice turned fully to face her husband, setting her plump body right between the gun and the slowly graying vision the stranger was trying so hard to cling to. "Clyde Ward. What in the name of all the blessed angels in Heaven is that supposed to mean?"

Clyde gulped audibly, and said, "Sheriff says, if we gotta put the man back where we done found him, then so be it."

Heart gripping terror seized the stranger, and his throat closed up with the jumble of questions and fears he couldn't possibly begin to name - no! Don't want to die, not this way! Ain't a man supposed to have a chance to make peace??

"We are _not_ putting this man back in the stream to drown, or get eaten by those mangy, flea-bidden... things!"

"Now, look here, woman-"

"Clyde, it'd be more humane to just put the poor bastard out of his misery than leave him on the road to die a lingering death! Do you want to leave him to die, the way those gunslingers left poor Gil? Do you really think anyone will come before he's past help?"

"Then git outta the way, woman."

A breathy little sound passed through the old woman's lips, and she slid over, just a touch. The stranger could feel the heat digging into the hole in his gut, into the edges of his mind again, but he made one last bid for mercy - he had nothing left to lose. "P-please... help..." 

And then the darkness shuttered in on him, hard and cold and full of the mercy he sought.


	3. Nothing Left to Lose

Slim wasn't a crying man. He hadn't cried for the first death he'd known, an old mousing cat who'd lost a fight with some coyote. He hadn't cried when he'd gone to war and had to leave friends behind without markers. Even when he'd buried his mother and father, he couldn't bring himself to shed the tears that filled his broken heart. 

And they didn't come on this fine, warm summer morning. Slim stood in the back door and stared at the yard, waiting for his eyes to burn, but nothing happened. It was just another morning on the ranch. The hens were clucking, no doubt wondering why in the world no one had come out to spread their feed, and the horses were stomping out back, snuffling their complaints. He was sure the cattle needed to be moved on before they munched the west plain dry, and there was still the stack of dishes from the day before yesterday, before everything ended.

* * *

_Charlie Torch was what the folks in town called a good man: he was a steady deputy, a church going fella, and a devoted family man. He was an obvious choice to be Mort Cory's protege. But he could be a hard man, suspicious too, and he didn't always give everyone a fair shake. He and Slim had butted heads a couple times before, usually when Slim and Jess had joined up on some posse, and Charlie was breathing down some poor old fool's neck about something or other. Slim had always shrugged and said he'd grow out of his suspicious ways whenever Jess' feathers got ruffled (which, naturally, was often)._

_"Where's Harper, Sherman?"_

_Slim found he was less inclined to shrug off Torch's aggression, especially first thing in the morning, after tossing and turning all night, worrying about losing track of the murdering girl and her loot, and how to get Jess back for burial. Slim gripped the doorway and forced himself to stay friendly. The man had come to help, after all. "About forty miles thataway the last I saw him. No telling where he is now, God rest him." Slim leaned out of the doorway, and was surprised to see only one horse tied to his porch. Torch had no one gathered with him. "You're alone?"_

_"For now."_

_"I see." Slim didn't see at all. "Is Mort gathering the posse?"_

_Torch narrowed his eyes at Slim. "Sheriff Cory has other business today, Sherman. I'm here about Harper, and the stage line theft."_

_"Well, yes, I'd assumed as much - wait. Stage line theft? I was stolen from, but not the-"_

_"Save it for Mr. Crawford. He's coming in on the morning stage, direct from St. Louis, and he's expecting answers."_

_Slim recoiled as if struck. "Answers?! For what?"_

_Torch put a single finger to Slim's chest - he didn't leave it there, but he dared touch him in a way no man in Laramie had dreamed of doing to one of the Sherman men in **years** \- and said, "You pipe down, Sherman. I'm not dazzled by your looks or the way the townswomen swoon over you, sir."_

_Before Slim could tell that two bit tin plated Charlie Torch where the hell to go, the sound of hooves drew Slim's attention out to the trail. The stage was coming in under a full head of steam. "Excuse me, **Deputy**. I've got work to do."_

_He'd planned on getting the horses changed, and having the driver get word into town that he needed help finding Jess' remains and the girl they'd foolishly taken in. Instead, three men tripped out of the stage and shoved Slim away from the vehicle. Two of the men were great big, cowboys covered in dust and cow dung, and absolutely reeking in the already scorching sun. They were hulking fellas, wider than Slim and a little taller, too. They used their size to bowl anything down that stood in their paths, and went about the business of changing the horses none-too-gently._

_The third man was a small dumpling of man, pasty white like he'd never seen the sun a day in his life, and soft, softer than a bowl of butter on a sun-warmed windowsill. He was ridiculous, in his wingtipped shoes and pinstriped three piece suit. It looked like the latest fashion, all the way from the shores of New York, or maybe even Paris or London, something Daisy, God rest her, would have commented on and fussed over (after giving those big bullies a piece of her mind, of course). The dumpling man wasn't dressed for the weather or the setting._

_Dumpling waddled away from Slim with a sniff, and went to the porch, where Charlie Torch still stood. "Would you be Sheriff Cory?"_

_Suddenly, Torch was the most solicitous man Slim had ever seen, kowtowing to this little… half baked muffin of a man without batting an eye. "No sir, I'm his chief deputy, Charles Torch. That gentleman there, that opened the door for you? **That's** Slim Sherman."_

_Slim walked up to them, head held high, and waited for someone to explain just what the hell was going on. Dumpling wasted no time. "I'm Clive Crawford. I'm the chair of the Overland Stage Company. And you, sir, have a great deal of explaining to do - twenty thousand dollars worth of explaining!"_

_Slim had tried to be civil through it all. He'd fed them. He'd let them use his facilities. He'd told them his story, the whole thing, about how he'd not listened to Jess' warnings, how he'd given chase but was too far behind… how he'd seen Jess' awful end._

_They didn't care. All they wanted to know was where was the strong box, where was the strong box, Slim. Where was Jess and the strong box. Just tell them what they wanted to know. Where'd Jess take the strong box. It would go so much easier for them both, just come clean. Tell them where the strong box was._

_But there was nothing he could say that would appease them. As far as he knew, the damn strong box had made it to its destination. Dumpling Crawford stormed out of the house, vowing to take the contract with him. Charlie Torch wasn't any better. "You should just tell us the truth, Slim. You know we'll be watching every move you make."_

_Slim had gone into town after his 'guests' had gone, but no one would look at him. Folks crossed the street at his approach. The barflies cleared a path in the saloon, while the bartender pretended not to hear Slim speak. He tried to ask men in the saloon, in the barbershop, in the general store, and even just out on the street, to help him look for Jess, but his words fell on deaf ears. He finally mounted his horse, defeated. Jess wouldn't be coming home, wouldn't take his final rest up the eastern slope of the Sherman Ranch. The closest thing he'd get to a grave would be whatever tree Slim planted just outside the bedroom window._

_Except, there was a note on the door when Slim got home that evening. The bank was calling in the mortgage - not an impossibly high amount, but much too high in his current bind. He had two weeks to pay the bank, or they'd take the whole damned ranch from him._

_Before, he probably could have sent Jess on to sell some stock upstate, and held off the bank a couple days with his petty cash. Now, even if he'd had the cash on hand, he couldn't leave town to make a sale before someone would come and steal the land right from under him, with the sheriff's blessing. He couldn't even plant a tree for Jess, on the land Jess helped tend, the land Jess had grown to love as much as any Sherman had._

* * *

Two days ago, he'd been satisfied, surrounded by the small but meaningful trappings of a life well lived and hard earned. He had security and comfort, both in his pocketbook and his bed. Now his bed was cold and lifeless, and his income was gone. And now he was going to lose the home he'd been raised in, too, the home his brother had been born in. His father's dreams were turning to dust, all because Slim had trusted a girl in the grass. A skirted snake.

"To hell with it."

Slim turned his back on the animals and the chores and the bank and the law and the stage line and evil doing women and dead men. He stalked to his desk, took out pen and paper, and after only three angry false starts, managed to pen a letter to a man in Boston.

> Dear Andy,
> 
> There's no easy way to say this, so I'll just say it. There's been a tragedy. Jess is dead. We've been robbed, and he died trying to catch the thief. The thief took the petty cash, and apparently stole a payroll from one of the stage lines. The company thinks Jess did it. His name is mud, and apparently, so is mine. The stage contract, naturally, is gone. The people in town won't help me. They won't even help me get Jess' body. He'll have no funeral, Andy. He's just gone. 
> 
> When I say no one in town will help, I mean no one. Jess and I had some loans, to make repairs and the like a couple years back. I'm not done paying them down, but the bank is calling them in now. I have two weeks to pay them off. But my funds have been taken, I no longer have the income from the stage line, and my help is gone.
> 
> I don't care about any of this, not any more, Andy. Jonesy and Daisy and Jess are with the Almighty now, Mike has found his cousins, and you're still finding your passion. If I were alone in this world, I'd shoot myself and let the bank take the blamed ranch. But I'm not. Dad left this place to __us__ , not just me. I know you bought your stake out to keep me from worrying about you making a life back east, but the truth is, Andy, when I die, this place is supposed to go to whatever children you have, or Mike's children if you don't wind up having any either. But the only way any of that can happen now is if you get out here and work something out with the bank. You have to do it now, Andy. And you have to find someone to help you run the place.
> 
> You see, I have to clear Jess' name. I have to find that scum of the earth that did this, that ruined our family. I have to see justice done. I saw how Jess met his end - don't ever ask, you don't want to know - and I know I can meet that same fate out there. If I come back, I promise to take the reins again, so you can go back to the life you love, the life we both want you to have. But I have to ask you, little brother, please, if Twelve Mile House ever meant anything to you, please, help me. And if not, then God bless you anyway, Andy. I'll always love you, no matter what you choose.
>
>> Love, your brother,  
>  Slim

When he was satisfied with what he'd written, Slim sealed the letter up tight, and looked around the cabin. He felt nothing. No sadness, no anger. No relief. Nothing. The house was just a shell, and likely would be forever, at least until he did his final service for Jess Harper.

He took his letter, gathered his belt, rifle and ammo, and stalked out to the corral. He released the horses, all but Dawn, who he brushed down and saddled up. He set out extra water for the other waiting animals, took a final look at the outside of the place he could no longer call home, and then turned his back on the ranch with a chilling finality. "Come on, girl," he said softly to his beautiful gray mare. "Let's catch that _bitch_."


	4. Blank Slate

_Light._

_It was always light._

_The light was a bright, blinding light, the kind that seared a man's eyes right out of his head - only, this light never hurt. Sometimes, he'd try to look into the light, but it was too bright to hold, even without the pain, and so his eyes would slide back to the silhouette. A silhouette of a man. A tall, faceless man, whose features could only be seen in faint flickerings on the peripheral. Large, expansive hands. Beautiful, expensive but well worn boots. A pile of golden hair, hair like the sun. Hair that was brilliant enough to be seen even in silhouette._

_Indistinct figures sometimes passed over the man's form, separate but part of him. Sometimes these faceless, featureless beings emerged from the bright, bright halo of light that surrounded him for just a moment, before dissolving again. Almost always, the sound of children laughing floated on the air, like the peal of Christmas bells back in Amarillo._

_He didn't know what Amarillo was, or what the thought meant at first. Eventually, he decided it had to be some unknown place a million miles away. Something like a little corner of heaven, a corner he couldn't get back to anymore._

_It didn't matter. He had his own heaven, right there in the brilliant light, with the faceless, golden man, and the loving laughter of spirit children. He stopped to admire the soft, gentle movement of the faceless man, the sweet smell of hay and horse mixed with the warm scent of coffee and some unidentifiable essence that had to be the golden man, the warm, gentle touch of silken hair and soft, velvet skin on his hand. In that moment, he always found himself filled with boundless, nearly indescribable joy. If he could stop the hands of time, he would. He'd stop and stay with his angel of mercy, this perfectly golden man._

_But he had no power, not to stop time, nor to stop the rolling destruction of his joy. That indescribable joy never failed to become inexplicable anxiety and fear. The light always grew dim, and the man always faded away, blending into the darkness, until he was no more. The children's laughter hardened to horse hooves, hard and fast on rocky ground. The silk and velvet became a cold, hard six shooter, with a sawed off nose and a heavy pearl handle so distinct and familiar, he'd swear it was part of his torn and mangled body. But the worst was the smell. The beautiful, sweet horse smell always turned to blood._

The stranger's eyes snapped open. The denial died in his throat unspoken, as always. He stared at the ceiling and waited for the terror to settle down, for his body to remember that whatever godawful nightmare took hold of his waking life was now over, and that this was just a dream, just a dream. When the sour swill in his belly calmed to quiet distaste, he held himself in his bandages and sat up, unwilling to spend another moment in that bed if he didn't have to.

The first few days and nights in that bed had been alright. There'd been no dreams then. He was too sick, too weak, and too cut up to hell and back again to do more than wonder if he'd see another morning. When the old woman showed him her handiwork, a big flat wad of metal that used to be a bullet, he'd breathed a prayer of thanks for the end to his troubles. But soon the dreams came, and he knew his prayers had been premature. The stronger his body grew, the stronger too grew the dreams. There were no needles and thread, no tweezers and old army nurses to mend the crack in his mind. He didn't know how much longer he'd be able to stand the noise in his own head. Maybe Old Clyde should have shot him down, after all.

_Enough._ He forced himself to his feet, and headed towards the back door to start feeding the hens. His gut complained. It always complained. Bullets and knives and weeks of being tended to by a feeble old woman and her nervous and bitter old man would do that. But laying around in bed wasn't helping his gutwounds heal any better now, and anyway what he really wanted was to get out and ride. He couldn't though, not until he was strong enough, and until he'd paid his debt to the old woman. He supposed the old man could have a share of his gratitude, too, since it was his home that was opened, his food that was served, and his clothing the stranger dragged onto his aching body. But the stranger was reluctant to say thanks to a man who'd as soon shoot him in the head and be done with it as let his wife do 'the right and Christian thing.' Still, the man had given him a good coat, soft with age, but warm and whole, and told him it was good to see the coat get some use, with no one left to wear it. There had once been kindness and mercy in the man, maybe as much kindness and mercy his wife had shown. But the kindness went right out the old man's eyes (and for a moment, hers too) when the stranger tried to ask who'd the coat belonged to before. 

The stranger learned quick not to ask questions.

The chickens gathered around at his feet. The animals knew the stranger, had taken to him quick. Miss Eunice said that way he had with the animals is probably what saved his life. "Those mangy old dogs is always bringing me something back I don't want or need, but this got to be the first time they brung it back to me alive." She'd set down a big plate of grits and gravy when she'd said it, though, so the stranger hadn't taken offense. She seemed to take deep pleasure in the way he scarfed that one dish down. He didn't have the heart to tell her it was only because his belly wouldn't take much more chewed food, and he was half starved otherwise. If the smell brought up thoughts of giggling children and places called Amarillo, well, she didn't need to know that.

He could hear the horses snorting and snuffling in their stalls. "I'm coming, I'm coming." The throbbing in his belly meant this would be a hard day. He wasn't going to get to the mucking before the old man was up. He'd be lucky to finish with the horses feed and watering before taking to bed again. Maybe he could rest in the barn - there had to be at least an hour before dawn, so no one would be up looking for him.

* * *

In the end, even after napping in the barn between chores, he wound up in bed even earlier than usual. Eunice tried tempting him with hot griddle cakes, which smelled so good when he dragged himself in to rest, and tasted even better. But his belly wouldn't hold them - two bites of the second little sweet flat bread, and it emptied all over the table. The old man hollered and raved, but the old woman just cleared the table and banished the stranger back to bed with a basin to catch any more sick.

Boredom was a special kind of hell. There were no books in the house, no newspaper - only a tattered old Bible, and he'd already thumbed through it a million times once he was strong enough to hold it. The walls in the room they'd stuffed him into were bare, and the window faced a rocky slope whose view never varied from his position in the bed. He'd have taken a seat next to the window, so he could at least catch a glimpse of sky or maybe see a critter somewhere down below, but his gut wasn't interested in being upright, or forward locomotion, or even laying perfectly still. He was stuck. He hunkered down in the bed, angry to be so weak, and wished for a distraction from his pain and humiliation. 

His wish was soon granted - he could hear voices in the parlor, which surprised him. If the the last few days were any indication, his keepers weren't the entertaining kind. He wondered if he'd be expected to show his face, or if he was going to be some dirty secret - the half dead saddle tramp ranch serf. He strained to hear some clue as to who exactly was out there, but all he could make out was a low rumble, and the soft but distinctive harrumph that was so uniquely Eunice.

Though he was loathe to change position and invite more nausea or ache, the stranger was desperate for any entertainment at all. He carefully slid his feet to the floor and forced himself up. Pain flared though his center, but he ignored it and shuffled to the shut door, and cracked it open. 

"Thank you kindly, Missus Ward."

"I done told you, Sheriff, I don't stand on no ceremony. Just Eunice'll do."

The stranger stiffened - the sheriff? Damn the old man, had he gone into town and badgered the law into finally coming to haul him away? 

"-for my visit, Missus - 'scuse me, Miss Eunice, heh - is we got us a bulletin goin' around a little ways outta here. Just got it couple days back, but to my understanding it's been passed around the whole territory already, close to a month got to be. Now, I don't reckon we got us anything to worry about, this bein such a backwater little town and all, but I said I'd check all my-"

The stranger leaned heavily against the wall, suddenly dizzy. Relief wanted to bubble up in him - he had no idea how many days he'd passed in Old Eunice's care, but it was enough for him to go from flat on his back barely able to sip a couple spoons of lukewarm bone broth to mucking a horse stall. He had to have been with them before whatever made that bulletin a worry of the law. 

But relief was something that was always just a hairs breadth out of reach, and this time was no different. He __didn't know__ how long he'd been with them, and that was the tall and short of it. For all he knew, he could very well be what the lawman wanted. 

Noise erupted in the parlor. Clyde was in the house, and though the stranger couldn't understand a damned thing being said, it was clear the old man was kissing the sheriff's ass. The sheriff was a lot less polite to the old man, which amused the stranger. His amusement died quickly though, when, after hearing the sheriff's business, the old man began ranting about the foolishness of young folks who never wanted to listen to their elders. 

He knew he had to go out there and face the lawman. Fear turned his blood to ice, and for just the faintest moment he thought he'd hide in the storage chest at the end of the bed. But of all the insults the old man had hurled at him for day on end - saddle tramp, gun slinger, outlaw, card sharp - one the stranger wouldn't let take hold was _coward._ He screwed up his courage, and stepped out of the bedroom.

The front room grew quiet when the stranger shuffled in and sat down heavily. He picked a seat across from the sheriff, partly to show that he wasn't afraid of a challenge (though he exactly who he was trying to show was beyond him), and partly to get a good look at the man who kept the peace around these parts. What he saw didn't make much impression on him either way. The sheriff seemed awful young to be wearing any body's tinfoil badge, much less the sheriff's badge.

The smile on the sheriff's face slowly faded as he took stock of the stranger himself. Apparently, he didn't like what he saw, as his gun hand dropped down to his lap. "Afternoon," the sheriff said lightly. He kept a hawk eye on the stranger's hands where they rested over his incisions. "I'm Sheriff Turner." 

The stranger gulped and nodded. "Howdy."

Sheriff Turner's eyes narrowed. "Ain't got a name, friend?"

The stranger looked helplessly at the old couple. Clyde shrugged and turned away. Wasn't his problem. Eunice set a cup of warm water and some lemons down in front of the stranger. "His memory ain't too good, Sheriff."

"Least ways, that's what he says," Clyde said roughly. "Don't say much else, neither."

"That so." Sheriff Turner leaned forward. "Don't remember your name?"

The stranger shook his head. "No, sir," he said, or tried to. He felt like he couldn't catch his breath, and the words came out like little puffs.

Turner glanced up at the old folks again, and pulled an envelope out of his vest pocket. "I suppose that means you don't remember what all you were doing before you came to work for the Wards, then?"

The stranger could feel his teeth beginning to chatter. He'd tried, several times, to remember how he'd gotten in his predicament. All he could ever come up with was fear... and rage. The fear, he supposed, was natural. After all, his belly had been ripped open by a bullet - and maybe more, to listen to Miss Eunice - what man wouldn't be afraid of something like that? But the rage, the rage gave him pause. Violent impotence draped over him like a heavy blanket, and filled him up with a need to smash and crush - but there was no focus, no place for him to turn his anger, so it gathered up inside him until he collapsed in unexpressed pain. He'd given up trying to remember after the third time he'd drawn blood in his palms, from clenching his fists too tight.

Now he forced his hands to open and relax, and opened his mouth wide. He wouldn't let the anger tie him up, not in front of this strange lawman who looked at him with growing suspicion. "No, sir. I don't remember. I can't." He glanced up at the old woman, and took strength from the calm, open expression on her face. "Nothing real, anyway. I just know I was hurt something terrible, and Miss Eunice here saved me. But first, Mister Clyde's dogs must have done their part - that's what they say, anyway. I don't remember that either. I remember... waking up in the barn. Covered in blood. I think... I think I was already dying." He trailed off and stared at his hands. They were shaking. 

"Fix your tea now, James, it's gonna get cold, and then the honey won't melt." The old woman began fussing nervously with the lemons and water.

The sheriff stood up, hand on his holster. "Thought you said he didn't have no name."

"Now, now, Sheriff, sir, don't go gettin' your tail all in a dander now," Clyde said, like he was talking to a cantankerous old mule liable to kick to kingdom come. 

Eunice was, again, far less interested in standing on ceremony. "Oh, pipe down, Sheriff. We had to call the man something. The name was Clyde's idea - said he was like to be a train robber or the like, and with that southern twang... well, we been callin him Jesse James."

The sheriff looked doubtful, but he relaxed his stance, and opened up the envelope. "You two named him."

"Like I said, we got to call him something," Eunice snapped. "Two menfolk in the house now. They got to know which one I'm talkin to." She deliberately turned away from the sheriff and began squeezing lemon into the cup. Over her shoulder, she said, "You've seen him, Sheriff. He's had a terrible morning. Couldn't keep his hot cakes down. He's been up too long as it is now, Sheriff, so I'm gonna get him back into bed before he keels over on us."

The stranger, who certainly answered to James on Eunice's account, but couldn't honestly think of himself as anyone with a name, stared at the the sheet of paper in the sheriff's youthful hands. He'd seen a sheet like that before. He had no idea what was on it, but he recognized it all the same. There was some kind of heavy block printing on it, something that spelled bad news. He just didn't know what the news could possibly be.

"Now, just a minute, ma'am." The solicitous tone was gone from the sheriff's voice. Eunice had the good sense to look worried before she turned to face the lawman. "I wanted to get a look at him on your husband's say. And now that I've seen him, I want to ask a couple questions - seeing as how he looks a lot the description listed on this here sheet."

And there it was. A wanted poster. The picture was hand drawn, badly. Eyes too far apart to be human. Mouth too far from the nose. Big, flat forehead, like the side of a damn barn. The face on the poster could be any walleyed fool, it was so far from what people really looked like. But once you got past the awful hand work, the resemblance was interesting. More interesting, though, were the words. Six feet. Slim build. Dark hair. Blue eyes. Quick draw. Excepting that last detail, that description fit the stranger nicely. 

"So, __James__. Do you mind if I just ask you a couple more things?"

Hell yes, he minded. The smell of the damn lemon water was turning the stranger's stomach. He was sore and tired and afraid of his own damned shadow. But, without knowing how or why, he knew how the law worked. Saying no meant he had something to hide. Having something to hide meant the law would be back through, only with reinforcements, and bigger guns. "Alright," he stranger sighed.

"Good. You ever been to Laramie?"

"I don't know."

The sheriff grimaced. "Think, James."

"Sheriff, he don-"

"Mrs. Ward, would you kindly bring me another cup of coffee, ma'am? Make it good and hot, now. More biscuits too, if you got 'em." The sheriff stared hard at the old woman, who looked for a moment like she wouldn't go. But she deflated and patted the stranger's shoulder as she left his side. Sheriff Turner looked towards the old man, but Clyde just sat down at the far end of the couch and stared at the stranger's tea cup. Turner pinned the stranger with a look. "You still thinkin' James?"

The stranger sunk even further down in his seat. "I don't remember, Sheriff."

Turner looked doubtful. "You know, that's real convenient, James. Can't remember your name, can't remember where you've been, can't remember past a couple weeks gone. Real convenient."

The stranger's trembling worsened. "But I can't..."

"The U.S. Marshalls been covering half the nation, trying to find a good chunk of cash from a stage line robbery, but here we have you showing up not one hundred miles of the heist, inside the window the thief made off with the goods. But you don't remember. _Real convenient._ "

"Sheriff Turner?" Clyde was back on his feet. "Now, I understand, you got a job to do. And I don't know what all this saddle tramp's been up to in his life. But, well, when this old boy showed up here, he ain't had nothing like no money on him. He'd been shot at and stabbed - but that was in front, sir, not back. I ain't sayin' he's a angel, because he's got a mouth on him, and the things he knows how to do... I know he's been places I for one ain't never had to go. But he don't rightly fit the bill any better than, well, you do. No disrespect, now, Sheriff Turner, I know you're a good sheriff, I remember you from when you was in your ma's skirts and all, but..."

To the stranger's surprise, the sheriff began to smile. "I thought you didn't trust him as far as you could throw him, Clyde. Isn't this the man you wanted me to come take off your hands?"

"Yes, well, that was before he almost died, and anyway Eunice is real fond of him. And we ain't found no money on him. No gun neither. Had a gunbelt, but none of the bullets was used, and the gun's gone. So whatever happened to him, I doubt he was much of a stage line robber. And my dogs found him back yonder-" the old man pointed to the back of the property, where the stream curved slightly towards their little scrubby patch of land " -so even if he'd tried to hide the loot before he'd collapsed, I ain't seen too much disturbance out that way that couldn't be explained by a simple bushwhack in the desert."

Turner raised an eyebrow and waited. "That all, Mr. Ward?"

"Yessir."

Turner sighed. "Can I see the gunbelt?"

Clyde hesitated. "Uh, okay... I was gonna... sure."

The stranger frowned, but he filed away the old man's reticence for another time. Instead, he forced himself to concentrate on the matter at hand. "Am I in trouble, Sheriff?"

Turner looked at him, and a slow, sly smile spread across his smooth features. "Do you think you should be in trouble?"

The stranger thought. "I think... I think I was in some kind of trouble when I got here. But I don't know that what's on that paper has anything to do with the trouble I was in. Money don't interest me. I'm more interested in freedom. I ain't got that right now - too hurt to move. But I can get out on the porch after dinner and sit with the old woman and her man, and I can get out to feed the hens in the morning, and that's more freedom than I had when I first got here, and couldn't get up to see to my bodily needs."

The sheriff shrugged. "That's an awful lot of double-talk, friend."

The stranger scowled. "Ain't no double-talk. Just trying to answer the question as best I can."

"I found it," the old man called from somewhere in the back of the house.

Turner ignored Clyde's announcement. "These the clothes they found you in, James?"

"No, sir."

"Where'd they come from?"

"They were my son's," Eunice said sharply. She had a steaming coffee pot in one hand and a platter of biscuits in the other. "And before you ask, yes, we still have James old clothes, and no, there was nothing interesting in any of them, save maybe that gunbelt, and yes, you can look at them if you want. Just look down, in that basket to your left."

In the basket to his left was a pile of scraps, and a half finished braided rug. Sheriff Turner looked at Eunice darkly. She smiled sweetly. "They were all torn up and bloody, so I took the good bits for my rug, and the not so good bits are rags for scrubbing. He's wearing Gus' clothes now, God rest him."

Clyde appeared with the belt in hand, but he looked reluctant to part with it. "Here it is, Sheriff."

Turner took the belt and examined it carefully, though the stranger didn't think there was a damn thing he could tell by looking at it. He felt like it was mostly a ploy to make him nervous. All it was doing was making him tired and irritable - he wanted to get back in the damned bed. He resisted the urge to stretch out on the couch, but he couldn't stop himself from leaning back, or the whimpering little breath of a sigh that escaped his lips.

Clyde cleared his throat. "Sheriff. The man's tired. And we had one hell of a time moving him into the bed when he couldn't move under his own power. He can walk now, so I'd just as soon not tire him out to where I got to pick him up and put him right again. Now if you're planning on taking him, then take him! Go on and get him out of my hair!" Eunice squawked, and the stranger gasped, but Clyde went right on. "If you do, though, make sure you got the right to do so! He's innocent until a jury proves otherwise, and I won't have blood on my hands that shouldn't be there. 

"And now it's close to supper time, Sheriff, and my wife's been running around making you coffee instead of preparing the evening meal. And I still got chores to do - chores I got to do by myself today, because he ain't had his proper midday rest. Now, you're welcome to stay for dinner, but we all got to get on with the rest of our day!" And with that, Clyde snatched the belt from the sheriff's hands, and stormed back to the back of the house, grumbling about the impertinence of young folks.

"Well," Eunice said, "are you staying?"

The sheriff did stay for a simple meal of biscuits and gravy, and then went on his way without another word about the wanted poster. The stranger turned away from the meal and the company, and settled himself by the window to watch for the sheriff's departure. Only after he was sure the lawman was gone did he lay back to try and rest. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow. 


	5. Loss of an Innocent

Slim stopped counting the days after the seventh sunset. 

He'd been out in the open for what felt like forever and a half, and knew he'd likely be out there until the end of his life, especially with the luck he'd had tracking the girl, which was next to none. 

When he'd started, the days were hot and dry, the nights cold and hard. Eventually, that gave way to a never ending damp chill as he made his way through a wide mountain pass. Some mornings he wanted to just stay on his back and roast (or freeze) to death where he lay. But the memory of Jess at the bottom of that ravine being dragged off to a fate worse than death spurred Slim on. He had to find Hope. He had to find her, and get the truth from her, even if he had to strangle it out of her with his bare hands.

He was running on instinct and rage, but instinct was next to useless with a three day start and absolutely no idea what a devil woman would do. Rage fueled him, kept him moving when a sensible man would have given up, but it blinded him, befuddled him, kept him from seeing straight. 

Some small part of him knew he was pushing Dawn too hard, but Slim pressed on, and she carried him with little complaint. Even when he insisted on riding deep into the velvet night, and rising before the sun, she gathered the miles under her pounding hooves, and carried him only God knew where. He promised himself every night when he slid to the ground, exhausted and despondent, that he wouldn't treat her so rough. And every morning, he’d mounted with a grunt and a growl, and pushed on, looking for anything, anything at all. 

The first thing he found was a hole in the ground, buried under the wet leaves and mossy ground cover, a hole just big enough for a good sized horse to slip a foot into, just deep enough to catch and hold her foreleg mid-stride. A nasty crack splintered the muffled predawn sounds of the forest, and time seemed to stop. Then all at once, Dawn screamed, Slim flew, and a dust cloud bloomed around them, while weapons and gear, man and beast scattered everywhere. 

Slim's tumble was hard and violent, and he felt bones crack and slip and grind in strange, impossible places before he finally landed on his back, the wind throughly knocked from him. If he'd had the ability to scream, he'd have cursed the still dark sun, the long gone moon, the earth, the sky and everything between, with all the power of the four winds. But all he could do was pant shallowly and think hateful thoughts about how women, human or horse, were all alike. 

Before he fully caught his breath, he heard a strangled sound up above his head, and immediately took back all his mean thoughts about Dawn. He tried to twist around, onto his belly, but moving one way shot white hot fire through his shoulder, and twisting the other way made the lower ribs grind together, and his vision swam even as Dawn's cries piercing cries of distress echoed through the pass. 

Slim lay there and waited for the dizziness to pass. Slowly, the world settled again and he could clearly see the patches of purple sky that filtered through the evergreens. The air was cold, and the dirt under his back was colder still, damp with dew and a general lack of sunshine. Though he'd been to Colorado, to Texas, and even further south plenty of times before, he'd never done so in such a blind, furious hurry, and he'd never strayed so far from the main road. He'd thought cutting through the pass was wise, figuring a saddle tramp with a twenty thousand dollar payroll in her hot little hands wouldn't want to travel the public roads. But as he lay in the chilly mud and listened to his horse scream in pain, he wished he'd taken the better tended roads. He wished he'd stayed home and waited for Mort Cory to come back and do the job that pissant Torch hadn't bothered to do. 

He wished he'd listened to Jess in the first damned place.

The memory of Jess on his back, broken and lost, spurred Slim to try getting up again. He put his weight on the left, the side with the busted ribs, and hollered as he forced himself into a seated position. His vision grayed out at the edges, but he stayed upright, mostly, and after a few gasping minutes was able to take in the scene around him. 

His gear was everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. His bedroll was unfurled and tangled in a tree above his head. His rifle was standing straight up in the mud to his right, as if some soldier had come along and dug it right in, to prematurely mark the place where Slim Sherman fell for the last time. The food stuffs were still rolling along the side of the slight slope, and he reached out to catch a can skittering by on his right. The can rolled into his hand, and he cried out in angry, pained surprise when just the touch of the can sent a spasm through his upper arm. He snatched his hand back, no longer concerned with his disappearing food supplies, and tried wiggling his fingers. They moved, but the pain in his wrist was terrible. Not as terrible as the lower left side of his chest, or his right shoulder, but worse than anything else he'd failed so far to discover. 

The next pain made itself known quickly as he tried to get his legs underneath himself. His left knee was twisted, and he went down hard on the right one, which jarred everything on that side - including, apparently, a twisted right ankle. "Okay, God. I know I'm not much of a praying man, but _I really need a miracle right now._ "

The rifle fell over, its butt just within his reach. He stared at the rifle in amazement, and reached out with his sore hand. His wrist throbbed with the effort, but he got the weapon in hand, and used it like a staff, finally getting to his very shaky feet. He nearly vomited from the pain, but he stumbled over to a tree and rested against it, grateful to be on his feet. His father once told him that if a man could get to his feet and stay there, he could make it to the next minute, and days were just made of hundreds and hundreds of minutes, all strung together. They were words that had meant the world to him as a boy, but he'd dismissed them as foolish rhetoric when he'd marched to war and watched friends and comrades struggle to their feet to no avail. After the horror of bloody boys fighting for a split nation, Slim had about forgotten that bit of Matt Sherman's simplistic wisdom. 

_Why the hell am I thinking about this now?_

He forced himself upright again, away from the support of the tree. He had to get to Dawn, to see just how bad off she was. She sounded something awful, but he found himself hoping that maybe she was just fussy because he'd been too pushy these last days, and the indignity on top of injury was too much to take. He might be able to get her moving again, slowly, until they found civilization. He ignored the fact that he hadn't seen another living soul in the last three days. He might still be able to help her. She might be alright.

* * *

Dawn was definitely not going to be alright. Though she'd managed to get her hind quarters up, there was absolutely, positively no way in hell she was going to get those front legs to hold her weight. Her left foreleg was bent back at a horrifying angle, below the knee, and Slim could see blood and bone. The right leg pushed hard at the ground, but it wobbled and buckled every time she started to get some lift. Her head thrashed from side to side, her eyes wild, her teeth bared. 

Slim reached a hand out, though it made every nerve ending in his body cry out in agony. He splayed a hand on the mare's warm, soft muzzle, and she stopped thrashing. Her protests turned to whimpers, and he could feel her quaking with the effort to stay still. 

"Oh, Dawn." Anguish and bitter regret crashed down on him, and he struggled to see his sweet, faithful horse through his blinding tears. "You're a good girl. Forgive me." When he withdrew his hand, she kept quiet, and Slim knew he couldn't make her wait. He let himself drop back down to his knees in the slippery mud, and got the best he could grip on his rifle. He pushed all thoughts of sadness and guilt away, and pulled the trigger.

The gun jerked in his hands, his wrist flared with new pain, and the shot went wild. Dawn whinnied, but kept still. Slim sobbed, a good, hard heave of the chest and gasp of air, but he tucked that damned gun against his shoulder and tried again, mad as hell and hurt for himself and his horse and his man. A squeeze of the trigger, and this time the big gray horse went down hard and silent. The rifle slipped from Slim's hands, forgotten. He stared at her and watched her beautiful dark eyes cloud over with something other. He wondered if this end to her suffering was something she'd had a chance to at least feel before the end. He wondered if that kind of thing was possible for beast, or for man. He wondered if Jess had suffered long. 

Slim suffered a lifetime in those few seconds. He vowed to find that woman and make her suffer ten lifetimes before he was through.

"Hey!" A voice, not to distant, snapped him out of his dark spiraling thoughts, and into a very vulnerable present. His supplies were spread all over the damned mountain, the belt with the rifle shells was nowhere to be found, and his gun hand was next to useless after putting poor Dawn out of her misery. Until he'd determined whether he was dealing with friend or foe, he had to assume the worst, and for the moment, the worst meant that he was defenseless against attack. He kept quiet, straining to hear the snap of brush under an approaching foot, or the breath of a warm horse. 

" _Hey there!_ Show yourself!" The same voice was suddenly much closer, though Slim still couldn't make anyone out. The woods and the sloping mountainside brought on an eerily early twilight, and the still steaming body of his beautiful gray mare was mostly a large dark outline against a darker dark. If he couldn't see Dawn laid out in front of him, then he had no hope of seeing this stranger, whose aggression grew with each passing second. "I said show yourself!"

"Don't shoot!" Slim held his hands up, though he wasn't entirely sure he'd be seen in the darkness. Still, he had to try, had to do everything he could to stay safe. Otherwise, Dawn's death, and Jess's too, was meaningless. "Please… I need help."


	6. Deja Vu

Even in the dark, without the protection of the shotgun in his gnarled little hands, Slim thought his silver-haired mountainside aggressor might be about as threatening as a little raccoon cub. The memory of Andy bringing in one of those little tiny balls of striped fluff to eat them out of house and home threatened to bring a smile to Slim's face. But the snout nosed shotgun in the old man's hands kept Slim's face perfectly neutral. Only later, in the light of a fire, would Slim be able to see that the damn thing had never been loaded.

The old man got close - too close. If Slim was really bent on doing the old man harm, he'd have been able to snatch the gun from his hands. The old man said in a voice that was even less threatening than his cuddly exterior, "Just what are you doin' on my mountain, boy?"

Slim gestured towards Dawn's still steaming body. "Had an accident. Had to shoot my horse."

The man grunted. "This is private property."

"Well like I said, I had an-"

The man ratcheted the shotgun. "Like __I__ said, this land is private. Trespassers will be shot on sight. N' you're trespasin'."

"I never saw any signs! Believe me, friend, I wouldn't have cut through your land if I'd known this was private property," Slim said, trying his best to be reasonable.

"You ain't seen no signs because you ain't been on no proper road. If'n you hada been, you'da seen the signs clear as day." He got so close, Slim could smell the cold metal of the shotgun wavering in his face. Old fool. All Slim had to do was fall one way and push the other, and he could get the thing away from the stupid old codger… "You saddle tramps is all alike. You ain't squattin' on my land, and you ain't hidin' no ill got goods in my trees! And you ain't walkin outta here without a belly full 'a buckshot!"

"That's it? You're just gonna shoot me," Slim cried. "Why even ask-"

"Because I wanted to see if you had any imaginations, that's why."

Slim grunted irritable and began to shift, but then he heard another gun cock behind him. "Stay still, friend," a second, deadlier voice said softly. 

Slim went still. A part of him wondered what it would feel like to die on this cold mountain. He wondered if Jess would meet him when he crossed the veil, or if he'd have to search through angels or spirits or stars, or if there would simply be nothing at all. It was tempting, all of it, any of it. To be with Jess again for all time, to have the hope of finding him again… to not feel the ache of a Jess-shaped hole in his heart and his life. 

But to give in that way, to simply lay down and die in the middle of nowhere… That would be the height of cowardice. He owed it to Jess to fight to the end, to make the people of Laramie understand that Jess Harper was exactly the man they'd grown to believe he was. He owed it to Andy and his pretty new wife and unborn children to be able to return and say for certain, Sherman is a name to bear with pride. He owed it to Mike to never give up, even if it took years - or even if it all ended suddenly, like it must have for Jess. He called out, to the man with the drop on him, "Why should I hold still? He's gonna shoot me anyway. Right?"

"He will if you give him a reason to." The voice was closer, and Slim could hear the sound of mud squelching with each approaching step. "For now, I want to know what you're running from."

"Not from," Slim said. "To."

"Go on," the voice from behind said. He sounded like he was right behind Slim. "On your feet. Keep talking."

Slim sagged a little. "Mister, I can't. I couldn't even stay on my feet to shoot my poor horse."

"Then you'll have to crawl."

"Can't do that either. My wrist is busted. Won't hold my weight."

"He might be tellin' the truth on that one, Chris," the old man said. "That glove looks like it wants to start bustin' at the seams. Bet he's gonna have a club hand by mornin'."

There was a grunt from behind, and then this Chris person said, "Well, it's your mountain, Emmet. Your call."

The old man hesitated, but he looked at Slim with the meanest look he could manage - which was about as mean as a sad kitten - and asked, "Why was you ridin' through-"

Chris cut him off. "We haven't got time for that, Emmet. We've been gone too long as it is. We need to get back - and we need to get him out of here, one way or the other. Just choose."

"Well, I'm tryin' to, Chris, but I dunno what to do with ';em! That's why I was askin' him his business."

"If you're curious about him, that means you don't want to kill him." There was a long pause. "At least, not yet."

"Sure enough," Emmet said. "So what now?"

"We could take him back..."

Emmet nodded, and Slim started to remind them that he wasn't any more capable of getting to his feet than he had been five minutes ago. But a strong hand hooked under his right arm and tried to haul him to his feet. Slim cried out, his whole body protesting the rough treatment. Rather than move up, he sagged to one side and whimpered. Again, death began to look attractive. 

"I reckon he wern't foolin', Chris. I know it's dark, but a blind man in a black room can see his color ain't right."

Slim forced himself upright, to face the old man and his damnable shotgun. "No, I wasn't fooling. But... I can make it, if someone gets under the good arm, and if I can lean-"

Before Slim could finish thinking out loud about the best way to get on on his feet, a far more gentle arm slipped around his waist. "Now take my arm," the younger man said. With some more maneuvering, a bit of swearing, and a great deal of trial and error, they managed to get Slim up and moving along the side of the mountain, in the direction the old man had appeared from. 

They came to what Slim thought looked like a glorified lean-to built right into the side of the mountain. It was weatherbeaten, and looked like it had been painted exactly once, about a hundred years ago, and then only for weatherproofing, not looks. The whole structure looked like it might collapse into the mountain if anyone so much as breathed in its direction. But there was a little wisp of smoke billowing up from a pipe set in the front awning, and the smell of roasting meat floated out on the evening breeze. 

The men lowered Slim gingerly onto an old wicker bench on the porch. He winced first as he went down, and again as the creak of the old and dry woven straw threatened to give under his weight. Neither of his escorts seemed concerned with the seat's stability, and left him to figure out how to best hold up his own weight. The younger one took the weapons inside, while the older one stood over Slim. "Get yourself outta those boots," he said. "Matter fact, get all that stuff off. Don't need you trackin' all that crud in here. And keep quiet."

Slim struggled out of his bloody, muddy clothes, yelping once when the old man tried to rush things by pulling too hard on the wrong foot. Once he'd convinced the old man to let him be, Slim eventually was out of his ruined clothing, and given a pair of ill-fitting long johns to pull on. The legs kept rolling up to his knees, and the arms were stuck just past the elbows, as both men were much shorter than Slim. But he didn't complain - he didn't much relish being all busted up in hostile territory, but he liked it even less for the several painful minutes he was stark naked on the dark side of a cold mountain.

After he'd had a chance to catch his breath, Slim poked his head in the shack's open door. "Hello?"

"Thought I told you to keep quiet," the old man said.

"Emmet," the other man said. Then to Slim, "Come, sit by the fire so I can get a look at what all we're dealing with."

"Don't you ';Emmet' me, Christopher - you go invitin' some strange man into my home, I'm already runnin' a charity hospital in here..." 

Slim chuckled quietly at the little old man's grumblings and began to gingerly pick his way into the room - but he stopped cold at the sight on the couch. A dark haired girl, dressed in rags, tossed and turned on the couch. Her face was pink and shiny with sweat, and her breaths came in sharp, ragged little pants. 

The rags she wore were different, but the face, the hair, even the delirium - they were all the same. 

_Hope._


	7. Face to Face

Emmet was too busy tending to the girl and her supposed fever to take in the look on Slim's face. But Chris, the younger one - who, in the light of the fireplace, wasn't so young after all, but looked to be maybe a couple years or so older than Slim - was looking right at Slim. The thunderous look on Chris' face spelled trouble. 

Poor fools. 

Chris' face was full of calculation and mistrust. Slim couldn't blame him - when he and Jess had first come across the bitch they'd foolishly called Hope, Slim would have attacked any and every suspicious tumbleweed to blow onto his front porch. He shuddered to think of what might have been - he'd killed before when he'd thought he'd had the right, and he'd certainly do it again if need be. Had things turned out differently, Slim could have easily killed a man coming to get whatever was rightly his that this thieving woman took with her feminine wiles. And now, the tables were turned, and Slim was looking at a man whose eyes burned with the same fierce protectiveness he once held. This Chris person could be deadly if Slim misstepped.

Slim hobbled further into the room, gasping with each step. When he reached the fire, he was sweating and shaking and didn't give a damn about the girl on the couch. Chris was crouched on the hearth, and had a pile of clean rags and a bottle of gin at his feet. "Take off the top," he said gruffly. "Let me wrap your ribs."

Slim did as he was told, struggling to free himself from the top half of the underwear. He didn't relish the idea of letting this angry man get too close to his busted up body, but he needed the help putting himself back together. He wondered if he could distract Chris with stupid, simple questions. "Pretty girl," he said, testing the waters. When Chris didn't immediately try to wrestle him to the ground, he decided to wade out a little further. "That his daughter or something?"

Chris gave him a look that said _you know perfectly well she isn't,_ but all he said was "I found her." He began the wrapping, and didn't pay any attention to Slim's exclamation of pain. 

"Oh," Slim wheezed. "What - _hng!_ -what's wrong with her?"

Chris took hold of Slim's bad wrist, started manipulating his fingers. He smirked slightly at Slim's yelps of pain. "Don't know. She's not talking. Obviously." He poured a shot of gin, and thrust it at Slim. "Drink up. Quick, now." 

By the time the man was done bandaging Slim up, he'd drunk nearly half the bottle, and was still feeling every sprain, strain, tear and break. He was sprawled out against the hot brick wall, almost too drunk to keep himself from falling right into the flames. He suspected that might have been Chris' plan, but he had no intention of passing out in a burning fireplace. Instead, he struggled to keep up with the conversation taking place across the room, hoping to get a better sense of who or what he was dealing with. 

"I don't know, Chris. I seen the horse. Her leg was surely broke, stuck up in some gopher hole or some such."

"It's just too much of a coincidence, Emmet. We have to get him out of here, and away from the girl."

"Just on account he asked who she was?"

"Because he _recognized_ her."

"Chris, now you're just being ridiculous."

"I was watching him when he came in. I saw his face. He's seen her before."

"And so what if he did?"

A pause in the shuffling, snuffling noises from the couch made Slim tear his attention away from the uncomfortable situation unfolding across the room, to find an even more uncomfortable situation fully formed right before his eyes. Though her face was still flushed and damp, she was perfectly still, and perfectly aware. Hope looked at Slim with big, green eyes that opened wide like saucers. 

He tried to get to his feet, to see if he could get close enough to the girl to ask her about the money, but his aching body had other ideas. He knew his pain was obvious to anyone watching him, because the girl sank down into her pillows, and gave him the tiniest little smirk. 

He groaned, frustrated to be so close to the mark, and to know that if she took off, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. He scowled at her, and watched her casually pinch at her cheeks without a care in the world. The bitch. She'd been faking all along. Hell, she'd probably recognized his voice as soon as he'd come in the room, asking fool questions. _Was she his daughter. Just plain stupid._

The sound of his moans stopped the men's conversation, and they hustled back to the hearth. Chris was on top of him almost instantly, and looked as if he wanted to ask what in hell he was up to. It was Slim's turn to smirk, though. He'd seen them coming, but he supposed all his grunting had masked the sound of their return, because Little Miss Know It All looked quite shocked to be staring that little old fuzzy man right in the face, her hands still at her cheeks.

But instead of questioning the girl he'd caught red handed, the old man turned to Chris with delight, and said, "She's awake, Christopher, she's awake!"

Chris forgot all about Slim and went right to the girl's side. "Can you speak? How do you feel?" He touched her hands. "She's still warm, but less so. Fever must have finally broken. Can you tell us what happened?"

The men were perched on an invisible precipice, waiting for her to break her precious silence. Slim was too, in a way. His heart was in his throat. She was going to tell them she was fine, she was going to pretend not to have ever seen him in her life, she was going to ask to buy a horse, and she was going to disappear again, and there wouldn't be a damned thing he could do to stop her. He'd found her, he'd _found her, dammit_ , and he'd still failed.


	8. Alone

Long after the sheriff's visit, the stranger jumped at his own shadow. He couldn't settle, couldn't shake the feeling that the sheriff was astride his steed, watching from the top of the steep slope that hid the Ward's land from the rest of the world. He told himself to settle down, that soon enough the sheriff would be through with word that the bandit had been caught, or the money found, or that there was more important business at hand and that was the end of the poster from Laramie. But no one came, and the days turned into weeks, and the stranger was doing stupid things like knocking over coffee cups and dropping whole buckets of feed at the drop of a hat.

The dirty looks the old man gave him weren't doing a thing to calm the stranger's nerves. It seemed like every time the stranger knocked something out of place, there the old man was, burning hatred into the stranger's skin with the force of his glare. The scrutiny made the stranger all the more nervous, which naturally lead to more accidents. He was tempted to leave, to take a horse and head for the hills, but he knew his body was still too weak for that kind of riding. He sometimes thought of simply walking away, too, but he didn't know the country well enough to try. He didn't know how far they were from town, didn't know if he'd find a place to lay his head or anything. He considered using the wagon to make his way into town, where maybe he could get work serving whiskey to bad men, but his desire to leave must have been too obvious, or he must have stared at the wagon too hard. Clyde cornered him one afternoon. "You so much as _breathe_ on that wagon, boy, and I'll have the law on you so fast it'll turn your hair white!" Not the most sensical statement, but it got the message across. The stranger kept his eyes down after that. 

The warning did something else, too. It made the stranger wonder just what in hell Clyde was playing at. Was there something to the reward? Had the old man changed his mind? Was he just trying to keep the peace in the house, trying to pretend to protect a stray in front of his wife? Did he intend to eventually go into town to see if there was a reward on the poster? Or was it simpler than that? After all, the Wards had to be in their sixties, at the very least. The stranger was young enough to be their son, maybe Eunice's grandson, if she'd had a daughter early on, and that daughter had had him early on. Maybe the idea was to keep him on the land, to make him a servant until the end of their days. 

A part of him liked the idea, actually, that there was some cranky old man who expected him to do all the heavy lifting, and some mothering, snappy old woman who insisted on feeding him every night. But if he examined the thought too closely, something inside him twisted, and the pain of blank memory came down and washed all his efforts away, leaving him with awful knowledge that this was wrong. This wasn't the order of things.

Still, he worried at the thought of some nameless old pair, and a warm wooden house filled with laughter and some other unnamed thing, in the mostly fruitless effort to keep his fear of the sheriff's return at bay. There were times when he'd be so engrossed in his wishings that the snuffle of a horse or the flutter of a chicken wing against his leg would make him jump and holler and swear like some old fool who'd spent too long at the long end of a saloon. 

"James, when you come in from the-"

The stranger dropped the saddle he was polishing and whirled around, gun hand at his hip in the blink of an eye - and then he gasped, as startled by his own reaction to Eunice's voice as by the power of her shriek. "I - I - Miss Eunice -"

She took off out of the barn as fast as her feet would carry her, which was a hell of a lot faster than the stranger would have expected, given her usual slow, careful movement. He went tripping after her, desperate to apologize. He would never have drawn on her, not really. Not really.

He went in through the side door, shoving past the table and chairs to try to get to the back room where the old folks slept. He half expected to find her cowered under her quilts. "Miss Eunice? Please, I'm so sor-" The stranger drew up short as the business end of a rifle suddenly appeared at the kitchen doorway, with a red faced old lady behind it. She was shaking so hard the rifle was making little figure eights right around his collar bone, but that didn't matter none to the stranger. At this range, she could point the damn thing at the wall behind her, and he'd still be killed. He slowly raised his hands, and said in a soft, easy voice. "I am so sorry, Miss Eunice. I would never hurt you."

"That so?" Her voice shook harder than the gun, and the stranger's shame doubled. He'd never seen her so frightened in the long weeks that he'd been there. More than that, there was pain in her eyes, in the set of her mouth, the trembling hands. "And what if you'da had your gun? What then, _Jesse James?_ "

He wanted to say he wouldn't have fired, wanted to say that arming one's self didn't make a man a murderer. But he couldn't. He honestly didn't know. Up until that moment, he hadn't thought he'd have ever drawn on an unarmed man, or any woman. Obviously, the peaceful man he'd fancied himself was just a figment of a tired and wishful imagination. "I don't know, Miss Eunice."

The pain gave way to anger, pure and simple. "You don't know. Tell me, James, what makes an innocent man automatically reach for a gun in the home of the simple, good people who rescued him? What innocent man tries to shoot a harmless old woman down in her twilight? And for what? For not stepping heavy enough?"

The stranger winced. "I... I don't know who I am. The law says a man is innocent until proven guilty. But that doesn't make him a good man, and it doesn't mean he ain't done the things he's been accused of doing, whatever they are. You've been trying to convince everyone - the sheriff, your husband, even me - that I'm an innocent man. But maybe that's not true. Maybe whatever it is that won't come back to me is something better left behind. Maybe I'm not such an innocent man. I want to be. But what I want and what I do aren't always the same thing, and for that, I'm sorry."

His gut didn't want any more strife or strain, and made itself known. Pain lanced through him, sharp and hot, as it still did from time to time, but he ignored it. He knew she could see the sudden pain. He saw her eyes flash down to where his shirt - her son's shirt - hid the scars of his unknown battle. But she didn't lower the gun. If anything, her hold on the weapon became steadier, her face calmer.

He breathed through the pain, and forced himself to ask the words he didn't want answered: "Do you want me to go?" She looked at him suspiciously. "I will, if it's what you want. I... Your husband warned me not to go. He said he'd set the sheriff on me if I did. But I'll go, if you want."

Finally, she lowered the gun. "I'll pack you some food." She didn't make a move, though. She just stood there, staring at him. 

He finally turned away and went to the room he'd slept in for a season and a half, and shrugged into his borrowed coat and hat. He returned to the kitchen, to ask if it was alright to take the coat, and was surprised to see his gunbelt on the table. Still no gun, but that was alright. Maybe he could trade the belt in some town somewhere. There was a package of hard biscuits, a small sack of coffee grounds, a canteen, and another package of jerky, all next to a little burlap bag just big enough to hold the lot. The stranger packed his food - meager portions for a man who was getting ready to walk into the unknown - pulled on his gun belt, and left in heavy silence. 

As he stepped out into the midday warmth, he saw her standing by the barn, the rifle resting peacefully in her hand, not ready for firing, but near to hand all the same. He waved. She didn't wave back. He hadn't expected her to. He turned away, and wondered why an image of trampled daisies lingered in his mind's eye.


	9. Waiting Game

The bitch had nerves of steel. 

Hope could have been the toast of Paris, what with all the acting she was doing. From the moment Emmet and Chris discovered her miraculous 'recovery', she'd shifted into a high falutin' version of the same stunt she'd pulled on Slim and Jess. 

For the first couple of weeks after 'waking', she didn't move from her place on the couch, not even to relieve herself. Chris assisted her with tender, quiet efficiency, while Emmet turned away in embarrassment. (Slim refused to look away. The woman had no shame, and even if she had, he'd tended to her the same way the first few hours after she'd taken residence on his own couch. It was nothing he hadn't seen already.) 

She coughed a lot - not a whooping hack or even a wheeze, but little insipid dainty puffs of air, over and over. The sound irritated Slim whenever he was set up by the hearth, which was most of the time. But it seemed to ignite a blaze of worry and fear in her caretakers, who would come running whenever she started, even if one of them was already by her side.

There had been no doubt that the men were _her_ caretakers, too - not Slim's. The old man gave him a walking stick when the sudden appearance of cold weather made it too hard for Slim to get around on his own, but that was the most acknowledgment of his injuries. Chris sometimes made comments to Emmet about thinking Slim was a put on. Slim might have punched his lights out, except he wasn't putting anyone on, and he could barely get himself out to the porch for his own dose of sun.

Hope would pantomime for sips of water or broth, and pant heavily after the supreme effort of moving her limbs about. Slim watched in disgust as the men cradled her head and cooed over her, the poor frail little bird. It never seemed to occur to the two fools that she might not look so frail if she'd eat something besides hot chicken water. But they were probably too busy worrying about whether or not she was going to ever recover. After all, she'd had a bad fall, and had (according to Chris' eventual descriptions of how he'd found the girl) likely been out on the mountain side all night, and who knew what else had happened to her? This sentiment was often punctuated by a dirty look from Chris. 

Slim ignored it. He had to, if he was to keep his mouth shut all while they begged her to try to remember who'd attacked her on the road. He'd done all that, too, though he liked to think he had a bit more dignity about the whole thing - after all, he wasn't so susceptible to a woman's charms, not with the kind of charm Jess... well, at any rate, the girl had only been of interest to him as a human being who possibly needed a helping hand. She wasn't a delicate little waif to nurse back to health in the hopes of wedding and bedding her, as Chris clearly wanted, or to become the strapping young (grand)daughter Emmet likely never had. Slim had simply meant to let the girl rest up, and send her on her way with well wishes. 

He still wanted that, in a way. He wished her straight to Hell, and he was going to make sure he was present for the send-off. 

That meant taking a page from Hope's book - he kept quiet about his own injuries, and the degree to which he was healing. He knew that as soon as he was well enough to walk off that mountain, he'd be sent packing. He was determined not to go unless it was in the little lady's company, and if he succeeded, he hoped sincerely to make it a secret when they left together. The last thing he needed was Emmet following them down, empty shotgun in hand. Or worse yet, that knight in shining velvet and leather, come to rescue the bitch from the mean, mean man with the busted ribs. 

Slim knew his hatred of Chris was irrational - the fool was a victim, just as he'd been. But Chris was the girl's gatekeeper, and that made Chris the enemy. Emmet, on the other hand, was simply a busybody ignorant little old man who'd been stuck up on the mountainside too long. Slim could spare a moment of pity for him - about a moment a day, it seemed. The pity usually came after watching Emmet try to cheer the girl up with a story, or offer her some of his awful stony biscuits to gnaw on. She was sweet and polite to the old man, the way she had been with the stage line drivers (because she'd been trying to learn their routines, Slim realized), but she always swept him out of focus whenever Chris came in the room. In fact, she swept everything out of focus whenever Chris came about, and seemed to pine for him like a child weeping for her lost daddy, or maybe a jilted lover. And Chris, of course, took it as his due. 

Slim thought it was just her youth that made her gravitate towards Chris. After all, he was still young enough to do the kind of heavy lifting a young woman needs done right after childbirth. But then, when Chris was tending the fire and not paying any mind to the dozing brute on the hearth, Slim noticed the watch Chris kept in his vest, and he knew that Hope had to have seen it while he was tending to her every aching need. 

Before long, Slim found his suspicions confirmed. The girl had her hands all over Chris, even while pretending to be oh-so-very weak. But Slim could see what she was doing - she was feeling the fine velvet shirt, the stitching on his new leather vest, the weight of the gold chain he wore around his neck. She'd pegged him for a man with far more wealth than the old buzzard had on display, and she was trying to figure out how to get her hands on it. 

And then she'd begun asking Chris if he'd help her find her way home. 

Slim could feel the end approaching, and he wasn't ready for a long, hard chase. He tried not to panic, tried to just keep quiet watch, and hope and pray that Chris' obvious protectiveness extended to making her wait until he was satisfied with her recuperation.

The men, clueless as they were, didn't see Slim's panic. (Or maybe they were shrewder than Slim gave them credit for, and never let him see they noticed his discomfort about the girl.) Hope, on the other hand, made it clear that she knew exactly what he was thinking. One rare morning when Chris was out hunting for one half of breakfast, while Emmet was milking the other, the girl raised herself up on her elbows and sneered right at Slim. 

"Hello, Slim," she said in a quiet, serpentine voice. 

He kept his face perfectly neutral, and, though it burned him through and through, held his tongue. 

"Did it hurt?" She nodded in the direction of his borrowed staff. "Your fall?"

He closed his eyes, and gingerly touched the cloth that kept his ribs bound tight together. 

"Lucky for us, we found these nice men to take us in. Charity is such a beautiful thing, isn't it?"

Slim almost asked her what she wanted from him, almost asked her where she'd taken his money, almost asked her why she had to kill a man when she could have had anything she wanted just by asking. But he didn't trust himself to stay quiet, and if the men came tearing in here to rescue her from his rage, he'd never get another chance at his answers. So he bit the inside of his cheek until he could taste blood, and stared dully at a point above her head. She let him burn for a few hours, and then the next time they were alone, she started in on him again. And so it went, for a few days.

Just when Slim thought he'd reached his breaking point, and would surely smash the girl's head against the stone hearth if she said one more insipid thing, Chris demanded Slim get to his feet. "You're well enough to stay outside now, friend." The way Chris said 'friend' sounded like the bitterest curse ever to pass a man's lips. "C'mon. You can bed down in the storage shed until you're able to ride."

Slim frowned - why the sudden animosity? "Do I have to?"

"Yes," Chris said crisply.

Slim looked around the room quickly, desperate for any excuse to stay. His eyes landed on the staff propped against the mantle, and he blurted, "Can I build a fire in there?"

"Don't be ridiculous boy," Emmet said, coming to his other side. "Course you can't build a fire in a storage shed. Now come on, let's get you up."

"But, why?"

Chris smiled humorlessly. "Because she still can't tell us what happened to her out there, but she's afraid of everything - she's afraid to be left alone. And because I've seen you watching her when you think no one is looking."

Slim tried to ignore the panic fluttering in his gut and the pain flaring through his heaving chest. "I've just been staring into space. I'm bored here. I'm used to doing a lot of work, seeing some faces pass through my land on their journeys, having a family to entertain me. And I'd stare somewhere else, but this seat here is the best place for my aches and pains, and my eyes just naturally fall on the young lady. But I'm not _watching_ her." 

"You ought to be getting better by now," Emmet said. "Well enough to get off your roost here by the fire."

"Oh, he's fine - he's just trying to keep an eye on the girl," Chris said, and made a grab for Slim's bad arm. Slim yelped and swore, but Chris kept trying to haul him up.

"Chris!" Hope's shrill voice cut through the fight, and Chris practically dropped Slim to run to her side. "Chris, no," she said breathlessly. "Don't."

Slim glared at her suspiciously while he cradled his aggravated arm. What the hell was she playing at now?

"But he doesn't need to stay here, darling," Chris was saying, as if the girl was his true betrothed. 

"Oh, Chris. I'd feel so guilty, sending that poor man out into the cold that way, away from the warm fire, when I'm here on this couch. Bad enough he spends all his time on the floor there while I'm up here. Don't send him out there, Chris. I - I just couldn't bear it!"

Emmet looked confused. Chris looked back with an equally bewildered look on his face. But no one was as confused as Slim. Why on earth would she help him stay where he could spy on her? 

"What do you think, Emmet?" Chris asked. " It's your place."

Slim looked at Emmet, and rubbed at his shoulder, hoping to get the old man to feel sorry for him. "Well... since the lady don't mind... I suppose I don't feel right about sending him away from the fire neither," Emmet said finally.

Chris sighed and nodded. He fixed Slim with a look. "Alright. But if she gives the slightest hint she has reason to regret her charity, I'll make sure you pay, friend." 

Slim glanced down at Hope, whose sweet smile turned positively nasty when Emmet bustled back to his animals. Slim looked back up at Chris, before closing his eyes. Chris could make all the threats he wanted, and Hope could think she'd outsmarted everyone in the territory. Slim was still in the game, and that was all that mattered.


	10. Crossing Over

Alone, again.

The stranger still couldn't remember anything before Clyde and Eunice Ward, but the moment he lost sight of their scrubby little patch of land, he was struck by a miserable familiarity to being out on his own. For all he knew, he'd come from a bustling family of ten, and had struck out on his own the moment he could mount a horse. But even if that were true, the stranger couldn't shake the awful feeling that he'd been on his own before, for a long, long time. He didn't like it. 

_One foot in front of the other. One foot in front of the other._

He tried to tell himself that every step forward was a step closer to civilization, a step closer to other people, a step closer to another world he could lose himself in for a little while. He tried to tell himself that at the end of his journey he'd find someone who knew who he was, and that there was no need to fear, that he'd done no wrong. He tried to tell himself that the pain in his gut wasn't real, and that he was just feeling put out for getting put out.

He stumbled and landed on hands and knees in the hot dust. Almighty heavens, but he was tired. He was tired, and his belly really did hurt, dammit. He collapsed to his good side and panted, just trying to take in some air. He'd been on the road since mid-morning, and the sun was already beginning to slope to the far end of the sky. He was exhausted. He hadn't walked more than the length of the fenced in yard in the weeks since his awakening, and he'd only recently grown strong enough to put in a full day of work without having stretch out in bed halfway through. He was still terribly out of shape, no good to be walking such a long distance in the sun, with no chance for respite. 

But he couldn't stay out in the open where he'd fallen. _Get up._ The old man had to have made it home already, he had to have seen his unpaid servant was gone. He would've had time even to turn back to fetch the sheriff. _On your feet, boy._ The distance a footbound man could cover in half a day was a pittance compared to the distance a man could cover on horseback. Every second the stranger spent idling was another long legged equine stride to whatever fate the law held for a man who couldn't defend his past actions. _Damn it all to hell, get up!_

Though it took some doing, he managed to get upright enough to put more trail dust between himself and the Ward property, scrabbling in the hot, scrubby land. The land around him soon turned soft and sweetly green, and in the distance, tall, old trees emerged from the cool, pliable earth. But the road he was on remained dry and dusty, and the shrubby bushes that dotted the nearby landscape provided him no shade. There was no place to rest and eat unmolested, no place to hide. Not even a place to relieve himself discreetly, not if he was worried about a posse dragging him away at a man's most vulnerable moment. And the need to make water was becoming almost as urgent as the need to take water.

The stranger kept his eyes peeled as he trudged on, looking for any kind of place to take cover or signs of the law finally catching scent of his trail. When he finally saw something, he thought for a moment he'd found a mirage: way out in the distance stood a little farmstead of some kind, complete with a patch of vegetables growing a little ways out from the boxy little wooden structures. 

Where there's homes or agriculture, even a tiny vegetable garden, there's usually water. Water meant thicker brush, maybe even trees - a natural hiding place. He didn't see any such treeline yet, but that didn't mean he couldn't check - besides, the land might dip and tumble, like the slope behind the Ward place. There could be all kinds of hiding spots, if he stopped sticking so close to the worn path under his feet. The stranger veered off the path, and headed for the vision. 

He soon reached a small stream - a creek, really. He bent his knees, intending to kneel for a drink, and was surprised when he just kept on going down. He landed face down in the creek, and sputtered and splashed until he managed to get a shoulder in the water and his nose and mouth out of harm's way. His whole body was heavy with exhaustion. Maybe he could just go to sleep, and let nature take its course, whichever way it fell. The coyotes could come for him, or maybe he'd get bit by a rattlesnake. Or he could just fall face down in the creek again, dead asleep, and never wake up. 

The idea was tempting, but it wasn't what the stranger wanted. He figured if the Good Lord wanted him back so soon, He wouldn't have let him live through the pain of getting cut all to pieces and sewn up again by Eunice Ward, and the foolishness of her husband's twisted rage, only to drown in a thimbleful of water. Besides, he could still see the farmhouse or whatever it was downstream. He could probably find shelter somewhere on the property, if he could just get himself there.

So the stranger dragged himself out of the water, hand over hand, to the muddy soil, and let himself breathe, just lay there and rest for a few moments. Then he crawled like a snake in the grass, dragging his belly through mud and dandelions along the side of the creek. 

It took the stranger an awful long time - too long - to get up alongside the property, but he made it before sundown. He lay in the grass next to the creek and listened for a posse. He heard nothing. Maybe the old man had been bluffing? Whatever the case, the only sound the stranger could hear was the gurgling water flowing past his head. 

Still, it didn't pay to throw all caution to the wind. He stayed low to the ground, dragging his wet body through the dust and brambles, to get to the nearest building. He was slow, careful not to make a sound - not even so much as a twig snap. He held his breath and hoped that there were no mutts on the property, nothing that could sniff him out and sound an alarm. After a moment he began to relax - if there were any dogs about, they were busy or stupid. Nothing came to announce his presence, and he huddled in the shadow of the small boxy building closest to the stream.

He could just make out the sounds of human life, now that he was practically in the middle of the property. He could hear the yelp of a disgruntled child, and the sharp word of a man, and the clank of glass and metal. He blew the creek water out of his nose and found he could smell meat and bread. His stomach gurgled, and he unwrapped his portion of hard biscuit and jerky, and pretended to be satisfied with his ration. 

Eventually, the sounds of supper time died down, and the sky began to separate into bands of color. The stranger picked his way around his chosen hiding place, hoping to find an entrance of some kind. It was some kind of outbuilding a few steps away from the main house. There was no opening he could use on the three walls that faced the property's exterior - not even a window. He wasn't surprised - if he couldn't get in without walking onto the people's land, then a thieving bushwhacker couldn't either. Still, he worried about dogs or curious kids catching him trying to slip in the door unawares. He worried about the door being locked. He worried about finding the structure stood wide open with no fourth wall to hide him, just a gaping lean-to that served as semi-shelter for a wagon or some such.

When the sun was nearly down, just before the family began lighting lamps inside, the stranger risked a look at the front of the structure. At first glance, he didn't see any windows on the building, just a single door right in front. He skittered back, and looked carefully at the house itself. There was a clear line of sight to at least one entryway to the house. The house was also lined with a striking number of windows. But he couldn't see any silhouettes, no one reading by the brightly glowing lamps that sat perilously close to the dry looking muslin curtains. If his luck held out, then all he had to do was get to the front of the outbuilding, get the door open and shut, and he'd be able to rest for a spell.

He pressed his back to the wall and edged along the house-facing side of the structure. He spared a precious glance away from the house to check briefly for a lock or latch. There was none that he could see - just a frosty little windowpane set into the door, right at his eye level. He wanted to look inside before trying the door, but he didn't dare turn his back on the house a second time. Instead, he reached backward and groped blindly until he got his fingers around the rusty metal handle. He grit his teeth and pulled the door open, inch by careful inch, until it was just wide enough for him to squeeze his bare head in. His body, too lean from farm chores and no heavy food, slipped through real easy.

The room was dark and smelled of rust, dirt and leather. The stranger put his hands out and inched into the room, trying to feel his way to a safe place to nest. With a bit of slow, silent fumbling, he could make out a hoe and and a pair of rakes, a couple of worktables and some heavy shears. Tool shed, he decided. This could either be a perfect hiding place, or a dead giveaway, depending on how often the tools were used. The Wards hadn't had any such shed. They'd stored their tools in the barn. This shed and the house made up two of the four structures the stranger had seen on his approach. One of the structures seemed large enough to be a barn of sorts to the side. He hoped the tools in the room he was nesting in were simply part of the overflow collection. 

He put all worry out of his mind, deciding he'd find out in the morning, at any rate. Maybe they'd be more kindhearted folks who'd take in a man down on his luck and send him off with a good, hot meal. Unlikely, but he lulled himself to sleep with the thought anyway.

When the sun streamed in through the little window, piercing his sleep with bright light, the stranger knew no one would disturb him. There were spiderwebs everywhere, and most of the tools looked like they would disintegrate if he breathed too hard. The only disturbance in the thick layer of dust was the track he'd laid down to get to his hiding space in the corner.

He crept back towards the door, intending to investigate the rest of the property, and nearly came face to face with the family matriarch. An old woman stood in front of the shed, staring right at the window. The stranger ducked down, and reached out to catch a falling broom before it sent everything else in the room crashing to the dirt floor. He could hear his heart pounding in his chest as he waited for the other shoe to drop. 

But then the sound of a squealing child calling for grammy broke the spell. The stranger leaned back, and he saw the woman's shadow pass over the window before disappearing altogether. He strained to listen for returning foot falls, for signs that the woman had alerted the family to his presence, but no one came,.

Still, he was too shaken to try leaving just yet. He listened to the sounds of life, and nibbled at his rations, trying to keep up his strength. The sun rose and set twice before he ran out of food. When he drained his canteen, he knew he couldn't keep hiding in a tool shed. Still, it took him another day to gather the courage to even look out of the window again.


	11. Unexpected Ally

This time, the stranger decided to wait for the morning explosion of post breakfast activity to wind down before looking through the peep hole. He could see the family milling about - there were three little girls doing some kind of handiwork on the porch together, while the boys lugged sacks around the side of the house. The stranger wasn't sure, but he thought there might have been oats in one of the bags, judging by the trail the smallest boy was leaving while he struggled with the over full bag. That meant there was probably a horse or two around the side of the house that the stranger couldn't see. 

The family was eventually gathered for dinner, and the sun soon fell below the horizon, draping the house in velvet darkness for a third night. The stranger couldn't stand his thirst any longer. Weak or not, he was going to have to brave the property, at least to quench his thirst. He eased the door open, and gave half a thought to the creek behind the shed. But if he went that way, he'd do best to just keep walking - it was too risky to come back to the property without a clear sight of the house. And he wasn't sure he was up to the task of roaming the countryside on foot with this sore gut. Besides, those boys were taking sacks of grain around the side of the house for a reason. They were either storing the stuff, or they were feeding someone with it. Either way, that meant staving off starvation for another day.

He bent over and skittered across the yard as quick as he could, one eye on the front door of the house, the other on the corner he'd soon be rounding into the unknown. He braced himself against the side of the house, and looked around the corner.

To his surprise, there was a whole menagerie quietly snuffling in the night. A chicken coop stood next to a small, muddy pig sty. There were several small pigs sleeping comfortably in the slop, and no noise came from the coop. It would be so easy to take one of the little animals and run off with it - but the noise would bring the family running, probably with a shotgun in every pair of steady hands. The stranger had counted no fewer than five children able to walk and talk and carry a heavy load, and he'd seen a mother and a father milling about when he'd first arrived. Eight shooters for sure - even if he wasn't still healing, the stranger wasn't so sure about those odds. His belly grumbled, but he ignored the chickens and piglets, took a long draught from the pig's water trough, and forced himself to continue his search.

He made a slow, nerve wracking circuit around the property. The shed he'd been holed up in was in the back, close to the stream, far from the nearest outlet to a well worn road. The smaller animals were housed on one side of the main house, but the barn was on the opposite. He'd seen its side when he'd first snuck into the shed, but he hadn't really gotten a good look up close. The look he was getting now weighed heavily on him - it was close to the opening to the nearest road, sure, but the idea of sneaking a horse out of the barn, past the house, in such tight quarters? Not likely.

Still, he had to take a quick peek inside the barn. He needed to know what exactly, if anything, he was working with. He eased the door open, wincing as the rusted hinges squealed a bit. He paused, listening for signs of life, either from the house, or the barn itself.

A soft nickering made his ears prick. Horse. He loved the sound of horse, felt like it was a sound he was born to hear, like it was a sound he'd die with. Hunger still called, but the sound of pleasantly curious horses was lulling, and drew him in like a siren. He picked his way in the darkness towards the sound, mindful of hay and random bits of equipment that weren't properly secured. 

He reached the stalls without incident, and paused as the horses took in his presence. The soft sounds that had drawn the stranger to the stables was becoming sharper, like they were trying to decide if they were going to sound the alarm. For a moment, panic began to rise in his breast, and one of the horses began to whinny. He backed away, and forced himself to calmness. If he upset the horses, someone would surely come to check on them, and he had no intention of being caught in a strange barn in the middle of the night. He didn't live through... whatever the hell it was he'd lived through just to hang in some kangaroo court for horse stealing. 

As the stranger's heart calmed, so did the shifting, restless anxiety in the stable. After a moment, only one horse still seemed to have any interest in him, and he approached it cautiously, careful to keep away from the others. He moved in close, and the horse leaned down. He didn't have the nerve to reach out, but he spoke, softly, gently. "Hello, friend. Can't sleep? Me neither."

The horse lifted its head and looked at him with soft, knowing eyes. It blew out a quiet breath, and then proceeded to join its brethren in ignoring the stranger. An ignorant man might have taken offense, but the stranger felt warmer, almost... hopeful. Like he'd found a silent partner. All he needed now was an opportunity.

* * *

Opportunity came in the morning, after breakfast, before the drill of daily chores. The children were running about, taking advantage of the few minutes of the pleasant lethargy that overcame the adults full bellies before the real work of the day began. They were squealing and shouting and making all kinds of ruckus - and then he heard a real scream, a cry of fear. The stranger's first instinct was to run to help, but after his body tried to jerk into action, he reigned himself in, and settled for listening, and maybe getting a look through the little window. 

He crept up to the door and gasped. A child lay on the ground, under the shade of one of the only trees planted close to the house. The boy wasn't just dozing, though - the stranger could see the twist of his limbs, the plume of dust that was beginning to settle around the child, and the broken branch that swung ominously overhead.

In a few moments, the rest of the family was crowded in front of the tool shed, trapping the stranger inside and blocking his view of proceedings. He slunk down to the dusty ground and listened intently as the mother moaned, the children whimpered, and the father swore violently. Finally, the grandmother began to speak. Her voice was soft, too soft for the stranger to understand, but the whimpering and moaning stopped, the swearing quieted, and soon people were saying "Yes, ma'am," and he could hear movement.

The stranger listened hard at the door, and could hear someone cry out, sob a little, and then the voices were subdued again. He risked peeking out of the window, and saw the eldest child, a handsome girl, leading a pair of horses to an unhitched wagon. The next oldest child was bundling the little ones up in coats, while the mother and grandmother wrapped the injured one in a blanket. 

This was his chance. The family was preparing to leave en mass with the injured kid. He could grab a horse and go! He watched with rising hope, as the family climbed into the wagon and rode away. He poked his head out, hesitantly, listening for signs of life as he emerged in the light of day. Nothing. He should make a break for it.

But even as he picked his way back to the stable, his conscience kicked up one helluva fuss. The family was already going to have to pay a doc. He should leave them some kind of payment for the horse.

But he couldn't - the only things of value in his possession were necessary for his survival - and those were simply the clothes on his back. There was the gunbelt... but he hoped to eventually get a gun to put in it, and anyway he'd still need to get food for himself and for this horse he was gonna take, so he needed to be able to trade the belt later. But maybe he could help the family with their chores, so they wouldn't necessarily lose a full day's work getting the boy mended.

It took him a few minutes to find the feed, but he made quick work of feeding the hens and the pigs (and helped himself to a couple of eggs in the process), before looking in on the horses. They knew something was up, and they weren't inclined to be calm or friendly just yet. He fed them anyway, hoping that with a bit of routine, they'd accept him as friend rather than foe, so he could get the hell away when he'd absolved himself of the crime he knew he was about to commit.

He turned his attention to the house. There was a stock pile of wood that needed to be chopped down to fit into the stove, and the breakfast dishes were still on the table where the adults had left them to tend to the fallen boy. The stranger cooked his pilfered eggs with what little fire was still burning in the stove, and picked his way around the leftover biscuits and coffee and bits of meat, before clearing the table and heading out to chop up some of that wood.

The time hiding away in the shed had done his gut some small amount of good. He got through several good swings before he was winded, and his gut didn't double him over like it had done just a couple days past. Maybe he'd been working too hard at the Wards. Or maybe he just didn't want to be under their thumbs after all.

Whatever the case, he found he only needed a moments rest before he could stand up straight. When he did, a beautiful spotted horse stood before him, blowing gently on him. "Oh!" The horse didn't shy away from him. It drew closer, and watched with interest. "Are you my friend from last night?" The horse ducked down, searching his hand. "I ain't got no apples or nothing like that. But I can stroke you. That okay?" 

Time stood still while he ran his fingers through the silken mane, and he might have stood there forever, if a hunk of wood hadn't slid down from the stack and startled him from his daydream. He withdrew his hands. "No time left," the stranger said. He arranged the woodpile again as best he could, and thought of what a paltry payment that was. But there was nothing for it. He had to leave, now, before he was caught and his chance to slip away was lost forever. "No time."

The horse looked at him, and then walked around the side of the house, to the open road. Then it returned, and stared at him.

An odd feeling came over the stranger. "You wanna help me?"

The horse came and butted him, nuzzling the side of his face, and then turned and went in and out of the barn. 

The stranger watched warily, before following the horse into the barn. The other horses were still in their stalls, and didn't seem the least bit interested in the strange man who'd fed them their breakfast. The spotted horse came in beside him, and headed towards the other side, where, in the dark, an old and tired looking saddle hung on the wall. The stranger grabbed the saddle and threw it on his new friend, who waited patiently to be buckled in. Then he mounted up, leaned close to the horse's ear, and said softly, "Get me out of here." And then they were gone.


	12. Repeat Performance

For the millionth time, Slim cringed at the way Chris and Emmet went running at that girl's beck and call. He often wondered if he looked as foolish as he thought they did. He didn't recall dropping everything to tend to her every need, though if he had, maybe Jess would still-

__Stop, stop, stop it._ _

He needed to stop beating himself up, and to stop going over every little thing he could have done differently. He needed to save his energy for healing, and for figuring out how to right what was left of the situation.

Figuring out anything was damn near impossible, between Chris fawning all over the girl whenever she so much as cleared her throat, and Emmet bellyaching about all the work he wasn't getting done. Still, Slim was able to gather that the girl wasn't ready to ride yet, and that she wouldn't be going anywhere without that fop of a man.

"Here!" Emmet plopped a bowl of green beans down in Slim's lap. "I went from havin' one mouth to feed to havin' four in a matter of days, and seems to me like I'm the only one still able to do a doggone thing!"

Chris soon followed in on Emmet's heels, and gave Slim a death glare. "We could take him to the sheriff's office, let them feed him," he said. "He's well enough to ride, even if it doesn't feel too good."

Once again, Hope came instantly to Slim's rescue. "Oh, Chris, must you? You'd be gone so long... and for what? What if he's perfectly innocent?"

"What if he isn't?"

"He can still clean them beans for me," Emmet snapped. "Whiles you two is figurin on whether or not to take him off my mountain."

"Be reasonable," Hope said, and didn't she sound like the most reasonable person in the whole wide world? "If he isn't innocent, then what's to stop him from trying something with you out there alone? Yes, I know, he's hurt, but you think he's faking, and that he needs to be kept away from me, so what makes you think he'll fake all the way to a sheriff? And if he does, what's to stop him from saying that _you_ didn't do those things to _him_?"

Slim began to laugh, though the movement hurt almost as much as the bone-snapping landing had. 

"What's so funny, friend?"

Slim clutched his aching sides and chest, and struggled through his mirth. "It never even occurred to me to accuse you of beating me up."

"And why exactly is that funny?"

Slim shook his head, and reached slowly for the green beans. No way was he telling Chris what was really on his mind. _Only a sidewinding liar would come up with a story like that. But that's fine, Hope. You keep me away from the sheriff. I'm not going to the law until I've got you in a harness and that money in my saddlebag, girl._ Instead, all he said was, "It just is."

Chris walked up to Slim and stood over him like he was about to make a case out Slim's laughter, but Emmet came and shoved a basket full of potatoes in his hands. "There's plenty a work you can be doin too, Chris. And she can help. Between the four of us I might be able to get dinner on the table at a decent hour."

"Well now, she hasn't had her walk yet-"

"Take her and the taters outside, Chris. It ain't gonna kill you to do both."

Chris grumbled, but he got the girl situated outside and took his task with him. Slim didn't pretend not to watch them go while he snapped the ends off the beans. He glared at the open door, even after they moved out of sight, probably to nestle together on the bench that took up the whole porch. He could still hear them, clear as if they were still in the room with him. She was cooing over him, and after some coaxing, he was cooing back. Two turtledoves in love. 

"You don't approve, young fella?"

Slim looked up in surprise, to see Emmet smirking at him while he plopped something wet and heavy in a pan of flour, and sent plumes of the stuff everywhere. "Approve?"

"Of their coupling. You look like you don't like what you see out there."

Slim forced his face to relax. "He just... needles me. He doesn't trust me, and I don't like not being trusted. And it's not too fair, I'd say. The only reason I'm here at all is because my horse threw me so hard and had to be shot. Otherwise, I'd be nowhere near here, or that girl he's trying so hard to protect."

Emmet shrugged. "Mighty funny coincidence, though, finding you only a day or so after coming up on that poor little girl. And with you able to handle a gun."

"Barely," Slim said. "I nearly fell over about ten times trying to get poor Dawn in my sight."

"Dawn?"

"My horse," Slim said, swallowing around the sudden lump in his throat. He needed to change the subject and fast. "Anyway, I'm grateful to you for your help. I just wish I could get on your friend's good side."

"Why's that?"

"Because I don't wanna fight! Even if I wasn't all busted up, I'm really not a fighting man. I'm a rancher. I only fight when I'm cornered, and I really can't see any other way out. Believe me, I'd rather be back home tending to my horses than out here..." Slim caught himself. He hadn't decided what all he was ready to really share about his search, but one thing was for sure - he wasn't about to let that Chris person know that Hope was his quarry, and that meant not letting Emmet know either.

Emmet either didn't notice the abrupt silence, or didn't care about it. Or maybe he was just in the mood for making conversation, because he asked, as natural as you please, "Which way's your ranch?"

"Just outside Laramie."

"Wyoming? That's a long way out from here..."

Slim smiled. "Not so far. I've been farther, usually at the Army's request."

Emmet chuckled, though he didn't sound too amused. "Thought you said you wasn't no fightin' man."

"I'm not. I went to war because I was young and stupid and thought it my duty to take up arms and fight my fellow Americans, and because I thought it was the best way to protect my parents and my baby brother. When I came home, though, I was an orphan, and my brother, who really wasn't so young after all, was in someone else's care, because the folks in town thought I'd abandoned the ranch. I learned the hard way that there's nothing more important to me than my family. That's why I'm a rancher. My father spent his whole life getting us out there, building that place with his bare hands. And he died protecting it, even though that's what I thought I called myself doing."

Emmet grunted. "But you ain't ranchin' now. You're out here, gettin throwed by horses on other folks land."

Slim was going to have to give him something. "I took on a partner at the ranch. Now that he's all grown up, my brother's found he likes the city life, and I needed another man to help me. That... partner... went chasing after someone who took something from us, and got himself killed in the process."

Emmet stopped slapping things in flour and stared hard at Slim. "And so you're out for vengeance? But you ain't no fightin' man?"

"No." The lie was hard to tell, and it sounded like the falsehood it was coming off his tongue. Slim couldn't leave it at that. "Not vengeance. Justice. I want to see that the killer is hanged. And hopefully to retrieve what my partner lost his life for - to show the courts, to make them see... oh, _damn_." The tears were coming. All this time, he'd kept them at bay, but now, in front of this suspicious old man, one of the two people on earth who were keeping him from his mission, _now_ he was breaking down.

"He was like another brother to you, huh?"

Slim struggled for composure. "He was the best friend I ever had," he said softly. The words didn't even come close to painting the true picture of his loss, but what words could? He loved him? He wanted to grow old with him? He wanted to touch him? It all paled in comparison. 

"I'm sorry for your loss," Emmet said, and by God, he sounded like he meant it. "I hope you find what you're looking for."

_I already have. I just have to get her the hell away from here._ Slim held his tongue and dried his tears. "Thanks," he said, and didn't care if it sounded insincere. 

"How soon do you figure on heading on out after him?"

"What?"

Emmet looked at Slim strangely. "The killer."

Slim cursed silently. "I... I don't know now. So much time has passed. I might as well go home as soon as I'm able to get on a horse." 

"You might try now. Just so's you don't got to worry too much about Chris no more."

Slim nodded and forced a smile. "Sure. Soon. Maybe a couple of days. Right now, I feel like my whole chest is stove in like tinfoil. I wouldn't wish this kind of pain on anyone."

"Yeah, I done busted a couple ribs in my day too. Cracked my noggin once, too. I bet that poor girl don't feel so good neither, if I recall that pain rightly."

Slim raised his eyebrows. Hope was getting sophisticated in her old age. "She hit her head, huh? Say, where'd you find the lady, anyway?"

Instead of the suspicious look Slim braced himself for, Emmet let loose with a torrent of story he had to have been dying to tell someone. "Oh, I didn't find her. Chris did. He likes to come calling on me every few months or so, and it was about his time to come on in. Anyway, he comes on up like always, exceptin he's got this little girl slung over the back of his horse's rump, like she's a bundle of kindling. Now, I can't see it none, not at first, so I says to Chris, 'Chris! What's that you got there on your horse!' and he says back, 'You had any trespassers Emmet?' and I says 'I ain't shot no saddletramps if that's what you're askin!' And then I sees it was a girl all laid out, all dirtied up, dirt in her pretty little nose, all in her hair, all over her clothes, and I says, 'Where'd she come from?' and he points on over near the road. Anyway after we get her laid out in here and see she's sleepin like the dead, me and Chris, we head on out to search for her horse and to see if there's any sign of what all happened to her. Now, I seen tracks a little further up the mountain, not too far from my root cellar, and I figure that the brute that'd leave a poor little girl in the dirt that way musta ran up thataways, trying to get across the mountains faster. Course, if'n he'd a come a little closer to my home, he'd a seen the crick and knowed there's a faster way through than even over land. But Chris is pretty sure that he's still around, waiting to finish her off. But why would he do all of that? Why leave her for dead and then come back for her? No, I say Chris is barking up the wrong tree. I admit, I had my suspicions when we found you..."

Emmet kept right on talking, but Slim was stuck on the trail Hope's 'assailant' left. No doubt, if Slim tracked the horse that left that trail, he'd find a lonely, hungry horse with a Sherman brand on it. More importantly, though, was the fact that there was an extra bit of storage up there, separate from the storage shed that Hope was so determined Slim should stay away from. Maybe she was using a bit of misdirection? Get Slim focused on the wrong hiding place, and get him tossed out on his ear, empty handed? 

"...last time I put rutabagas in with my whisky stash!" Emmet was cackling about something inane. Slim chuckled, and hoped he wasn't expected to answer. "Anyhow, dinner looks about ready to come together now, so you just sit there and rest right now, and we'll all eat just fine." Chris came in, hauling the potatoes in with him, and Hope came shuffling behind him, stooped and slow, but with a glow in her cheeks and a stupid smile on her face. "And here the lovers come, just in time," Emmet said, happy as a clam. "We could be a little family, the four of us - don't look that way, Chris. Every family's got a black sheep. Sometimes they's blond."


	13. Saddle Tramp

The horse was a good, strong runner, unafraid of going off the beaten track. They made fantastic time, stopping just once to rest in the dead of night.

The stranger thanked his lucky stars the whole night through for the company and help of such a fine animal. He had no idea where they were headed, and didn't much care, so long as it was away from that sheriff and his suspicions, and that angry old man and his frightened wife. Any place had to be better.

They arrived at the mouth of a tiny town, which was little more than a ramshackle street, before sun-up, and headed for the one place that smelled like food and looked like public domain: a little lean-to shed with a shaky hand-painted sign which read _BlackSmith_. The place was shrouded in shadow, but the stranger thought he could make out a figure hunkered down in one corner, away from the glowing embers near the gate that separated the property from the street. The stranger cleared his throat and plastered a small smile on his face. "Good morning, smithy."

A large, gnarled looking old man got to his feet and glared hard at the stranger. "T'ain't mornin' yet, boy. Come back after I open up shop."

Before he could stop himself, the stranger snapped, "I don't exactly need a new shoe, smithy." The horse snuffled and shifted uneasily underneath him, and he forced himself to relax. "I just wanted to ask you a question."

"Told ya. Ain't open."

The stranger could smell metal heating up, hot and fierce, but he could also smell bacon. As much as it grated his pride to push, the need for sustenance overrode the need to hold his head up high after being twice rebuffed. "If I come back later, do you think you'd be interested in hiring? Just for a couple hours. Maybe in exchange for some of that bacon?"

"Ain't hiring nobody that don't listen."

"Alright," the stranger said through gritted teeth. He angled the horse away from the blacksmith's door, and headed to the other end of the town. He found a saloon, but the sun wasn't up yet, so he wasn't surprised to find the doors still latched. He tied his horse to the water trough, and strolled casually through the town, taking it all in. 

There wasn't much to the place.

One lone youngster, about ten feet tall but just barely growing in his whiskers, came out of a shack in the middle of town, with a shiny star pinned to his chest. His shaggy yellow hair needed a trim, badly, and he needed to stick that hat of his on his head instead of carrying it around in his hand before his nose peeled right off. But he was a good looking fella, and it made the stranger nostalgic for... something.

But then the young lawman fixed his eye on the staring stranger, and the unnameable feeling that smacked of want and need was gone. All the stranger wanted and needed at that moment was to get a hot meal in himself, some grain for his horse, and to get the hell on with finding a new life. He fetched his horse and led it back to the blacksmith.

"Say, friend, how far is it to the next town?"

The blacksmith didn't look too pleased to be bothered again. "Listen here, cowpoke. I ain't open and that's-"

"There some problem here, George?" The young lawman didn't look so babyfaced young, standing up close and personal like he was. 

"This here cowpoke wants a job. Says he wants to get underfoot for a piece of bacon. Like a damn barnyard cat."

Heat flushed the stranger's face. Then his stomach rumbled. The lawman chuckled, and the babyfaced demeanor was back. "Been a while since you've eaten, huh?"

"A day or so. Three days before that."

"Cut him a break, George. Let him have a piece of meat."

"You want to take on a charity case? You hire him, Joel, and give him the scraps of your breakfast!"

"No thanks!" The lawman turned to the stranger. "You'd better move on, friend."

"Can you tell me where the nearest town is?"

The lawman's smile was indulgent, like the smile a man gave a petulant child. "Friend, this road runs two ways, and I guarantee, you're bound to hit some kind of civilization in either direction. The trick is to get going."

The stranger stared at the young lawman in disbelief. He had half a mind to argue again, but the lawman's smile soon turned cold and hard, and his hand began to move slowly, but obviously, to his hip. The stranger wasn't armed, and even if he was, the last thing he wanted was trouble, especially trouble with a lawman. Embarrassed and defeated, he turned away from the unwelcoming men and began to trudge towards his horse.

Before he could get more than two steps away, the stranger heard the blacksmith growl, "Oh, I'm gonna regret this." A little louder, the grumpy old man asked, "You got any cash on you, boy?"

The stranger stopped, and swallowed the sharp retort that first popped into his head. "No, sir," he said, meek as he could manage. 

The blacksmith looked the stranger up and down. "Hmph. You look like you you don't weigh more than ninety pounds soakin' wet. You think you can heft, say, a sack of horse feed, or a full tub of water?"

The stranger had no idea if he could lift more than his hands right at the moment - truth was, he was feeling faint. He was thirsty and hungry and he could use a few minutes with his eyes shut. But he wasn't going to get anything to slake his thirst or hunger if he didn't get his hands on a few coins. "I'm stronger than I look," he said, and hoped like hell he didn't fall over on his face the moment he tried to earn his keep.

The blacksmith grunted again, before finally saying, "Well, I got bad knees, and I been puttin' off a lot of haulin'. So you stay here and help me out today, and I'll give you a day's wages."

The stranger looked back at the lawman, who was no longer smiling indulgently, and grew nervous. He didn't want to stick around a town where he wasn't wanted, particularly by the law. But maybe he'd be able to get enough to feed his horse and himself. He turned to the blacksmith and gestured at the lawman. "He gonna be okay with that?"

The blacksmith looked at the stranger like he was a three headed dunce, "Are you hungry or not?"

"Yes sir, but I don't want no trouble."

"Joel," the blacksmith growled. "He don't want no trouble."

The lawman waved his hands dismissively. "It's your headache, George. Do what you want!"

* * *

What George wanted to do was boss somebody else around, and to make that somebody else do some _very_ heavy lifting. The stranger didn't complain, but before the day was over he thought he might be sick from the pain in his gut. He pushed through, though, and didn't get sick, or even have to sit down. And at sundown, the smithy made good on his word. "Here you go. Fifteen dollars. Got a place to stay, boy?"

"Don't need one." The stranger pocketed the money, but his mind was already miles away. He was already scouting escape routes, looking for the best land to cut through, hoping for another small town to hide in for the day. "I can sleep on my horse."

"That's ridiculous. I got a bedroll right here. You could earn that kind of money every week, boy, and three square meals a day. And you got big, strong hands. You could be running this place in a few years..."

_Or Deputy Joel can come over here with a wanted poster in a few days..._ The stranger tipped his hat. "Thanks for the work, smithy, I'm much obliged. Hope you can find someone to help you regular." He hurried away from the blacksmith as quick as his feet would carry him. He begged the clerk at the general store to let him in before locking up for the night, bought a couple apples and some more jerky, and then mounted up and left that no-horse town as fast as he possibly could.

* * *

Once he was out of sight of the little town, and off the beaten track again, the stranger napped in the saddle while the horse took its time, happy to explore the unknown. The nap and exploration didn't last long though - the sounds of merriment woke the stranger and led him to a wagon train camp. There were folks milling about, eating some kind of gamey smelling meat and drinking who knew what, and they were laughing and singing and cavorting like they were having a grand old time. Like they weren't making the most treacherous journey of their lives.

In the middle of it all sat a group of men who looked like they were playing cards. The stranger could see money on the table. He thought about cards, about the kinds of tricks men were wont to play when there was money on the table, and he thought, what the hell, why not?

The folks on the train welcomed him with open arms and fed him something that tasted exotic and divine, likely made by the immigrant women he could hardly understand, but who made their affections clear enough. He made the circuit, quietly charming the young women while their mothers weren't looking, and inched his way towards the card game. 

Poker. Easy. Chancy, too. But he might, just might, be able to double his earnings before the sun came up.

He soon found that the men had been drinking too much and weren't really much at card playing. His luck warbled and wavered, but it never left him. He left the wagon train, though, while most of the morose card players were too drunk and sad about their losses to try to steal his winnings back. 

The good news was he wouldn't have to stop and beg for work again for quite a spell. The bad news was he couldn't really afford to sleep in the saddle again, not until he put some real good distance between himself and the wagon train, and the angry blacksmith with the suspicious young deputy, and the family he'd taken the spotted horse from, and the Wards, and whatever the hell it was what landed him in the Wards' barn in the first place.


	14. The Quiet Seeker

After more than half a day of hard riding, the stranger happened upon another small town called Buckeye, in the newly unionized state of Colorado. This one was much busier, and felt soothing and familiar, though he couldn't say why. He rode all the way through, real slow, taking everything in, and then hitched the horse up at the far end of town.

He soon found a fancy looking hotel and saloon that towered over much of the town - at three stories high, it was as impressive as any rock face he half remembered in the fog between sleep and wakefulness. The only building that was at least as impressive was the Town Hall, whatever that meant, with its red, white and blue banners and fancy white pillars, set almost exactly across the street from the saloon. The stranger gave the Town Hall a quick glance, but exhaustion and hunger dulled his sense of curiosity. Whatever mysteries the Town Hall held, they didn't guarantee a quick solution to the problem of food and rest. A hotel, however, certainly did.

He got a room and then poked his head into the saloon for food. More than a saloon, the place was a real card house, complete with dealers. He might stick around, get a job dealing - nice, safe money playing cards with men that wouldn't necessarily assume he was a cheat. And if they did assume, well, he'd be a cheat following house rules. 

Future plans all set, he ordered a drink from a glittering, yellow-headed working girl, and began to relax. The girl gave him a smile - a look sweeter than wild honeycomb - and sashayed away to place his order. When she returned, she draped herself right across the tabletop, and plucked his hat from his head. "Oh, honey. You look like a man with a story to tell." She settled the hat on her head and began tangling her fingernails through his shaggy, wavy hair. "Tell Bonnie all about it, sugar."

"Not much to tell, Bonnie. Been shot at, cussed at, run off. I'm hungry, I'm tired, I need money." 

Bonnie raised an eyebrow. "Well, it's a good start anyway. How about I get you a plate of the house special - you get yourself a room yet?"

"Yes..?"

"Well, ain't it your lucky night - the house special is half off for anybody with a room key, honey. I'll put it in for you, and then when you're all done, you go get some rest, and come see me tomorrow, okay?" She smiled just as big and bright as the sun, and sauntered off, his hat still on her head. 

When she returned with his plate, she hovered and tried flirting a little more, but he ignored her, more interested in the chicken and dumplings in front of him than the gorgeous yellow rose floating all around him. Once he was done, he got up, silently took his hat from her head, and stalked up to his room to crash.

* * *

_The man was back. The beautiful, faceless, golden haired man. It was as if he'd never left._

_But he was leaving again._

_The light was dying, and taking the golden man with it. He was swallowed by a darkness that fell so quickly, it left a mind searing hole where sight once was._

_Sound soon followed._

_Everything was muffled, the way life sounded under the surface of a cold, still lake. Silent. Distant. Untouchable._

_He can't breathe._

_He can't breathe!_

_He can't move._

_He's dead!_

_He's trapped in a dead body, and all around him life moves on. Something hard and heavy landed on his gut, and sent burning pain through him. Though he couldn't lift his head to look, he saw it as landed, the beautiful pearl handled gun, the one that always brought the cascading blood. He vaguely heard a preacher's words - ashes to ashes. Something soft batted at his face, then his belly. He can't see it, but he knows it's dirt. They've put him in the ground, and there's nothing he can do about it. He's dead._

The stranger came to all at once, sitting up slow and smooth and thoroughly confused. It took him several minutes to realize he was in a hotel room, above a busy saloon, in a bustling little town, with a stolen horse fairly abandoned at the other end of the town. He was alive and well. Well, he was alive, anyway.

He went down to settle up his bill, and hopefully see about hiring on as a dealer, but he was stopped just steps away from the desk by an even frillier, shinier Bonnie. "Well, well, well, good morning, sugar! Sleep okay? Feeling a little better?"

The stranger smiled coolly. "'Scuse me, ma'am." He tried to slide around her, but she grabbed hold of his elbow and fell into step with him as he made his way to the front desk. She hung onto his arm like she was his girl, he was her escort, and that was that. He ignored her and paid up, and asked the desk clerk, who was even chillier than the night clerk who'd checked him in, if he knew whether or not the saloon was hiring any dealers. The morning clerk looked down his nose at the stranger. "I don't know. I'm not sure how they feel about strangers handling the cards. Maybe try in a few weeks, once we get to know you." 

The girl, who was already overly friendly, suddenly wrapped herself bodily around the stranger. "Hey, listen, sugar - you got a name?"

The stranger sighed, and offered a name that didn't quite roll off the tongue. "I've been called James."

"James, huh? Not Jimmy?"

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Jesse, actually."

She froze, and he could hear the desk clerk skitter away. "Jesse James?" Her voice was no longer honey sweet, but cold and skeptical.

He smirked. "Not _the_."

She giggled in obvious relief. "Good lord, you gave us a start! So which is it? Jesse or James?"

The stranger shrugged. "Pick one. Someone else did. Say it loud enough in my direction, I'll know you're talking to me."

She her next laugh was a sensual purr. "Well, I'm fond of Jimmy, myself. Jimmy and Bonnie."

"You fixin to get hitched? Because you're much better off right here as a saloon girl than attaching yourself to a saddle tramp like me, ma'am."

She cooed and giggled again, and led him away from the saloon entrance and the front desk, over to the staircase where they could talk in relative privacy. "You're certainly a good looking man, and I don't think any woman with half a brain or one eye would give a damn whether or not you could provide for her, so long as she could go on lookin at you, Jimmy Sugar, but, no, I ain't lookin to get hitched. Not just yet, anyway."

"Okay, then what can I do for you?"

Her smile was as wide and innocent as the open plains of the west. "Well, it's more a matter of, what can we do for each other. You see, I don't exactly have work for you, but I do have a clean room here, and a little bit of a problem, and maybe you could help me with that problem, in exchange for access to that room whenever you need it - you know, a roof over your head - and maybe some good saloon food?"

"And what exactly is your problem?"

Bonnie fluttered her eyelashes. "Well, you see, Jimmy, I want someone to protect me."

"Protect you?"

"Mmhm. I get nervous doing the kind of work I do. Most menfolk, they get kinda... rowdy. They aren't like you. And I know I come on strong, but I have to - it's the only way I've got to provide for myself. But that doesn't mean I want to get manhandled all over creation, you know?"

The stranger narrowed his eyes at her. "A saloon girl with a personal bodyguard?"

Bonnie finally looked unsure of herself. "You make it sound so..."

"Sorry. I don't mean to make light of you. But... I think I'll pass, ma'am. The kind of work you're asking me to do is the kind of work a lady should have to ask for." He turned away, and headed for the front door, and pretended not to hear her complain that she wasn't considered a lady. 

One step towards the open door, and he didn't hear anything anyone else was saying anywhere. His whole being, heart, body and soul, were focused on the scene unfolding in the street. A group of men were gathered in front of the Town Hall, men with shotguns, men with badges, men with a horse. A friendly, spotted horse, one that had been tied to a post on the far end of town. _Damn _._ How in the hell did they find him so fast?_

Well, now he had an idea of what kinds of things happened in the Town Hall.

He turned and looked at the crest fallen Bonnie. A bodyguard for a saloon girl. Not his first choice for a job, but with his horse in the hands of the law, the stranger was stuck in Buckeye, and needed to be able to shelter and feed himself, at least long enough to get another mount. He ignored the hint of alarm that shivered up and down his back and cleared his throat. "Bonnie."

She looked up at him with wide eyed hope, and went skittering towards him. "Yes?"

"You serious about needing protection?"

"Oh, yes! Why, Jimmy? Are you going to help me?" She took his hand in both of hers. "Oh I'd be ever so grateful if you said yes! Are you, Jimmy?"

The stranger grit his teeth, and told himself to stop being so yellow. "I suppose I am."


	15. Entrapment

By the time the stranger had finished the third shot that Bonnie'd snuck him, he was convinced that the only thing Bonnie needed protection from, like everyone else in the saloon, was Bonnie. She draped herself over every hapless fool that walked in the place, and heavens above if the man looked like he had even half a rusty copper coin to spare, because she did her best to charm a fella out of it. 

Once he realized he was on his way to starting up a second bottle (and that the bartender was on to both him and Bonnie), the stranger knew he had to get some distance between himself and the pretty saloon girl. He went outside, hoping for a bit of fresh air, and saw that the law was out in force. Just what he needed. He hid his eyes as best he could below the brim of his hat, and watched quietly as several badged men walked up and down the street. One of them looked at him, looked right at him, but he made no particular moves towards him either way.

The stranger'd had enough, though. He returned to the safety of the bustling saloon, and settled himself in for a couple of rounds of blackjack. When he'd managed to win himself a couple of dollars, he paid for his drinks, right in front of a pouting Bonnie, and then asked her, "Key?"

"I was gonna take care of your drinks for you, Jimmy. That's part of our arrangement, remember? No harm comes to me, and you get a safe haven with whatever you need."

"Does the barkeep know that?" She kept silent, and the barkeeper snorted loudly before moving away to deal with another customer at the far end of the bar. "Thought not," the stranger said. "You can still buy me dinner. Just make sure it's paid for before I get it, huh? Now, about that key?"

"Oh, fine. You're no fun, sugar." She fished a gold chain out of her ample bosom, and held it out for the stranger to deal with. "Come get it." From the chain hung several odds and ends, and he recognized one of them as a hotel key. He sighed and settled the trinkets back in the nest of bust, while he struggled to free the key from its little golden prison. He managed to get the thing free from the chain without sending all her other charms sliding to the floor, and he gripped it tightly while struggling to relatch the chain. It was warm from its cozy resting place in her breast. She smiled wolfishly at him the whole time. "Wait up for me, Jimmy?"

"How else are you gonna get in?" He didn't bother to listen to her giggly answer, but turned and stalked out of the saloon and up to the room number etched on her key.

Bonnie's room was just like the one he'd rented the previous night, except hers was littered with the ridiculous trappings of a vain and messy woman-child. The stranger kicked aside last night's dress and picked his way through an alarming number of undergarments to get to the chair by the window. There was a cigarette case on the window sill, and the morning news paper in the chair, and a near empty bottle of bourbon with a clean shot glass at the foot of the chair. The setup was almost charming, like it had been waiting there just for him. He grimaced, and wondered how many plastered men Bonnie'd had protecting her all day and night, and scooted the booze away with the point of his boot. 

The cigarettes were too good to resist, though. He had no memory of ever enjoying a cigarette, but he must have done so before... _before_ , because he lit up and sighed in near the ecstasy that only comes to a man whose been separated too long from an expensive and unnecessary habit. He settled into the chair and smoked the whole thing down, before lighting another and finally turning his attention to the paper. 

Though he read the paper slowly, he finished while the sun was still high enough in the sky to bathe the room in a warm, firey glow. He had an awful lot of time left to kill before he could start looking forward to dinner. He supposed he could go back and check on Bonnie, but he was tired of drinking, and her idea of free meals seemed to consist mostly of riling up the bartender while she ordered too many free drinks. He looked around the room for something else to to pass the time, but all he found was Bonnie's junk tossed all over the room. With nothing better to do, he began stacking her junk in neat little piles, putting like with like, until the furniture was visible and the bed looked like a place someone might sleep, rather than a giant sideways wardrobe. Still, the room looked bizarre, not really cleaned up. Might be better to get some of the undergarments into one of the chests of drawers, out of sight.

He opened one of the drawers, and was shocked by its contents. He found no fewer than five gold watches, a handful of silver rings topped with what looked like real diamonds, and loads of cash. He opened another drawer, and found several gold chains, a number of strung pearls, and three or four purses stuffed to the gills with more cash. Undergarments forgotten, the stranger began going through the rest of the bureau, where he found more of the same. One particular gold piece caught his eye - it looked an awful lot like one of the pieces some fancy dressed fella at the tables had been wearing as a tie pin. 

Bonnie didn't need protection. It was Bonnie's _stash_ that needed protecting - either by a big tough guy to keep any other thieves away, or a foolish patsy to take the fall if the law started sniffing her out. Maybe both.

Whatever the case, the stranger had no intention of working anybody over for stolen goods, and he damn well didn't intend to get throw on a chain gang for some saloon girl's slight of hand. He slipped out of the room, and headed towards the back, looking for a set of back stairs. Hang the hotel. He could find another blacksmith, or maybe he could find some rancher passing through the heart of town who was short a ranch hand. Hell, that blackjack game had put a little cash in his hand. He could buy a horse, and hit the trail before anyone even noticed he was gone. 

He got as far as the street. When he emerged from the alley between the saloon and the building next door, he was unpleasantly surprised to see the beautiful spotted horse in front of the Town Hall again. A man with a badge stood talking to a thin man, who was petting the horse absently. The stranger stared, enraptured, as the horse snuffled and made a move as if to cross the street to greet him. The lawman and the fellow petting the horse turned to look at him, and the stranger gasped: it was the father of the child who'd fallen from the tree. And here the stranger stood, in full sun, so everyone on the street could get a good, clear look at him.

The stranger turned and walked back to the front door, hoping he didn't look particularly nervous, but it didn't matter. There was already another lawman at the hotel desk, talking to the clerk who'd checked him in last night. Off to one side, a third lawman spoke to both the morning desk clerk, and Bonnie, whose face was tight with fear and anger.

Bonnie suddenly cried, "There he is!" 

The stranger froze, and the lawmen whipped around, drawing on him. The stranger's hand twitched, but the badge closest to Bonnie drawled, "Don't wanna kill you, son." He was a wizened old man who looked like he'd been around to watch Moses part the Red Sea, but his stance was firm and his gun hand was steady. 

The stranger's gaze slid over to where Bonnie stood behind the oh-so-concerned deputy. She no longer looked fearful. Maybe a little smug, maybe a little naughty. _Oops_ her face seemed to say.

The stranger's face held a foul message all it's own, just for her.

"Turn around," the other badge toter said. The stranger obeyed, and he held himself still while unfamiliar hands searched for hidden weaponry. "Alright," the deputy said. "What's your name, friend?"

The stranger hesitated. They'd shoot him dead if he told them what the Wards were calling him. "I... I don't know."

"Now, listen, boy, lying won't help," the old deputy said. "We all know you was in the girl's room, we all know you was trying to get a job close to the rich folks that pass through town, and we all know you showed up same time as that spotted horse, who was run near to the ground. So how about you just go on and come clean and tell us your name, son?"

_Because I don't know it!_ But what good would it do to say that? Even if he could explain what he was doing in the girl's room, even if he said he had nothing to do with the things they were going to find (if they hadn't already) in her room, there was still the horse. Horse theft could get a man's neck broke. And none of it would wipe away the suspicion of robbery. 

The stranger hung his head. "Take me to jail," he said quietly. The lawmen sighed, but there was nothing they could do about his silence, not out in town. They cinched him up in iron bracelets, and ushered him out at gunpoint.


	16. Hope's End

Life on the mountain had become nearly unbearable, what with the girl forever pretending to be helpless as a newborn lamb, and Chris tripping over himself to tend to her every imagined need. Slim choked down whatever scraps they threw his way, and kept out of the way as much as possible. He tried to look on the bright side of things. Even if Chris occasionally fixed him with a death glare (that Slim desperately wanted to return), he'd earned Emmet's trust, and that might go some ways to helping him get this nightmare with the stage line fixed.

It was enough to get a few more nights by the hearth, at any rate.

Like every night since his capture, Slim closed his eyes and tried to close his mind to the sounds of the rest of the house settling in, but he could still hear the soft murmuring of a young couple fresh in love. He could also hear the old man giving Chris hell for tripping all over his big feet for the girl, or something to that effect, anyway. Even without hearing the particular words, Slim knew what the sounds meant. Jonesy used to give him the same kind of hell, and in her own way, so did Daisy, whenever Slim had been feeling protective of or particularly affectionate towards Jess. Hell, they'd probably tease him just the same way now that he was sleeping on a hard stone floor in a strange man's shack, waiting for his chance to clear Jess' name. 

He hoped they were taking good care of Jess, now that they were all together.

Tired as Slim was, sleep remained elusive long after he closed his eyes. Even after everyone else settled down into drowsy sleep, his mind whirled with the memories of a family twice lost, and a love forever separated from him. He was all cried out, having already cracked open the deepest sorrows of his heart to Emmet, but Slim still felt the raw loneliness like an open wound. He tried to reason with himself - of course he still felt the pain, he hadn't stopped to mourn, for fear of losing Hope's trail. But he couldn't afford to lose himself in his emotions, especially not now, not when he was so close. And he couldn't afford to lose sleep either. He couldn't afford to let her slip away because he'd slept through the first rays of the morning sun.

A string of soft spoken oaths broke through Slim's whirling emotions. He cracked his eyes open just in time to catch the outline of Hope's silhouette while she struggled to get her feet into Emmet's giant mucking boots. Slim tensed. Should he call out? But what if she bolted? What if she already had the stage line money hidden in the folds of her dress? If she got away from him now, he might not be so lucky to pick up the trail again. His ribs really did still hurt, and though his leg would hold his weight, he didn't know how far he could travel on foot just yet. And even if he did cry out, the men might waste time questioning him, instead of catching her until the law could sort this whole mess out. 

Reluctantly, Slim held his tongue, and waited for her to creep out of the house, dragging her feet in the too-big boots, before getting slowly uncurling from his perch by the now cold hearth. He wished he'd slept in his boots - getting them on gave Hope just enough time to get completely out of sight. But Slim thought about the rambling story the old man told a couple days back, and recalled that the root cellar was "up the mountain a ways," whatever that meant. He picked his way across the wooden floor, and stood on the porch to study the lay of the land.

Slim took one look at the footprints in the yard, and knew why Hope had stolen Emmet's boots. None of the tracks looked particularly distinguishable from any of the others at first. But Slim turned his attention to the side of the mountain itself, looking for any kind of disturbance. In the faint moonlight,made out a sort of worn path that looked like it saw more traffic than the rest of the mountain did. Slim whispered a single, breathless word of a prayer, and followed the path up the mountain.

To his surprise, he could see a small square of light set into the mountain side just a little ways up the path flicker to life. He moved off the path, out of the small beam of lantern light, and approached the well camouflaged root cellar with trepidation. He leaned against the side of the leveled out wall, and inched forward, until he could just see inside. 

She was hunched over a riding purse he'd never seen before, the sort of thing a rich rancher's daughter might carry her personal effects in. She was counting money and stuffing it into the purse as fast as she could. The lamp washed her face in a ghastly glow, and she seemed almost maniacal in the small, cold, dirt packed room. Slim stared at her for a long time, mesmerized by the sheer greed that transformed her usual sweet, delicate expression into something like a demon's mask. She reached down into a box at her feet, and his attention shifted abruptly: it was a strong box, not unlike that which was often used by the stage line. Next to it, abandoned like so much garbage, lay an embroidered wallet made of soft black cowhide. The wallet had been a gift, to commemorate an anniversary of sorts: ten years gone since Jess had helped Slim capture what remained of Bud Carlin's gang, and joined the Sherman Ranch, 'just to see.'

A cold calm settled over Slim. Hope was cornered, locked in a prison of her own making, with the evidence of her undoing at her very feet. Jess would rest easy now, with his name soon to be cleared with the good people of Laramie. Justice was within Slim's reach, and all he had to do was take it. "Hello, Hope."

The girl jumped and whirled around, and the purse dropped and spilled all its contents, like a confession. There was money, alright, and what looked to Slim like a silver spoon, a fine gold chain, and, to his surprise, Chris' pocket watch. When had she performed that little sleight of hand? 

Suddenly, she screamed, a blood curdling sound that seemed to stop the whole world. She ripped at her dress, and her screaming soon turned to terrified cries of "don't hurt me" and "please, I'm a virgin". Slim gaped at her, almost as impressed by her quick thinking as he was disgusted by it. He started to reach for some of the loot on the ground between them, but she kicked it just out of reach, to a corner a little further inside the cellar. She screamed even louder, and her face distorted with rage. 

Slim was stuck. With the money out of reach, he couldn't simply take it and head back to Laramie now. If he got too close, she'd do an even better job of making him out to be the aggressor. If he put some space between them, she'd escape, possibly right down into the arms of her hero, and then they'd be hot on his trail, sure that he was the horrible molester and thief Chris had already branded him. He was _stuck_.

A rifle blast hit the side of the mountain, wide enough not to cause any real damage, but close enough to get Slim's attention. He turned, though he stayed in front of the cellar door, and showed an angry Chris and a disappointed Emmet his empty hands. "Don't shoot!"

"Shut up! Get away from her," Chris demanded.

"She's not who you think she is! Look for yourself - she's robbing you blind, just like she robbed me," Slim said. "Look, Chris, your watch - do you have it?"

"I'm not going to fall for that!"

"Emmet has me covered, Chris," Slim said, trying his best to sound reasonable and calm. "I couldn't make a single move without getting a hole through my chest.

Chris paused for a moment, but then, without taking his eyes off Slim, he patted down his vest with one hand. Confusion flitted across his face, and he looked down at himself. He opened his vest, and then looked up at Slim. "How...?"

"It's here on the ground behind me, Chris."

Chris swore violently and brought his gun up again, but Emmet said, "Wait, you'll hit the girl!" To Slim's surprise, Emmet lowered his rifle, and trudged up to Chris, and put his hand on the barrel. It was still pointed towards Slim, and could still do some serious damage in a heartbeat, but the fact that it wasn't pointed directly at his chest put Slim just a touch more at ease. "Come on out, honey," Emmet called. "Tell us your side!"

"I... I don't know what he's talking about, Chris." Slim's stomach turned at the sickeningly sweet note to her voice. She sounded like a wasps nest smothered in honey and sugar water. Slim wasn't sure what he detested more - her cloying, pathetic whine, or the fact that she simply ignored the old man's words and focused her attention completely on her mark. "I - I can't come out. My clothes... he's torn them all up -" She broke off, and delivered a dramatic sob fit for the stage.

"You vile bastard," Chris began.

"Just tell us what happened," Emmet said, hiking closer to the root cellar.

"Oh, I don't know, I don't -" Hope gasped. "You!"

Slim looked back at her, and was surprised to see that though she still had her eye on him, she was crouched by the open strongbox, rummaging around with one hand. Slim started to walk towards her, but she shrieked, and someone fired a warning shot.

"Next time I won't miss," Chris said. "Step away from her!"

"I can't let her get away-"

"It was him, Chris, it was him! It's the only thing that makes sense! Oh, you've got to shoot him, he's merciless!"

Slim's blood began to boil. "Don't you try to-"

"I was in the woods. I was on a trail, with my fiance," Hope said with quick confidence. "We were riding, and someone attacked us! Tried to take my beau's moneybag right off his horse! The thief shot him, and took off! I - I tried to help him, tried to get him back on the horse, but he told me to run, and not look back! He said -" and here, she sobbed again, even more dramatically "- he said he'd hold the brute off. He gave me - gave me his gun. For protection..." 

Her voice trembled and warbled into the night, but her hand was steady as she pulled it out of the strongbox, and aimed a beautiful gun at Slim's gut. It was a sawed off six chambered revolver, with a pearl handle.

"You _bitch!_ " Slim leapt at the girl, all semblance of sense and self preservation evaporated in the presence of Jess Harper's gun. He could hear the men crying out for the girl, arguing about being in each others way, and the sounds of their hard cork boots scrambling up the path, but Slim had one thing, and one thing only on his mind. Get. That. Gun. 

He wrapped a hand around her wrist, but she was surprisingly strong. She was also massively frustrated - Jess' good gun had a hair trigger, but it also had a trick hammer, so she found she couldn't get her shot off before Slim had one hand on the barrel of the gun, and the other around her throat. "Let it go!" he roared.

Suddenly, there was a soft, but distinctive _snap_ under his hand, and the girl went completely slack. Her eyes, which only a moment before had been richly vibrant and flashing with wild anger, were cloudy and dark. Death had come for her in a heartbeat.

Hands grabbed him from behind, and Slim let them. He let them take Jess' gun from his shaking hand. He let them pull his other shaking hand behind him. The girl dropped like a sack of old onions.

Chris sobbed once, and grabbed Slim by the throat. The irony was not lost on Slim. "Murderer," Chris said, low and dangerous. Emmet held onto all the guns with one hand, and kept a half hearted grip on Slim's arm with the other. The old man stared at the heap of broken girl-thief on the dirt floor, and softly asked, "Why? Why?"

Slim wanted to ask the same. He'd done what he'd come to do. He'd made Jess' killer pay for taking his life. But it didn't matter. Jess was still dead. Slim was still alone. And now, he'd taken, however accidentally, the law into his own hands. Even in triumph, there was bitter defeat. 

The tears began to come. Slim closed his eyes, and let them fall. "Take me to the law," he said. 


	17. Citizen's Arrest

_Welcome to Buckeye, Colorado_. Slim frowned at the small sign posted at the town's edge, and tried to recall when or where he and his captors could have crossed the state line. Unable to recall any other markers, he decided that he must have crossed over before having set foot on Emmet's mountain, when he'd strayed from the well worn trail. The thought that he'd spent so much time outside of Wyoming Territory unsettled him deeply. He'd been gone much too long, away from his ranch, his roots. Roots he wasn't sure he still had anymore.

"Keep up, Mister." Chris' voice was sharp and clear over the hustle and bustle of a busy town coming to life with the rising sun, and it cut through the fog of misery that settled around Slim's head. 

Slim spurred his horse on, careful not to pass Chris up as they headed down the main thoroughfare towards the gaudiest building he'd ever laid eyes on. The townspeople soon stopped their scurrying and scuttling, and began to watch the sad entourage make their way to the Town Hall. Slim had been on plenty of posses, and had been wrongly accused more than once, but he'd always been able to ride in with his head held high, certain that, no matter what, the scales of justice were on his side. This cold, pale morning in Colorado, though, was different. He'd done exactly what he was to be accused of. He glanced behind him at his awful handiwork, and shuddered.

Hope's broken body lay in Emmet's rickety old wagon, draped with an old, tattered sheet. The wagon was drawn by a pair of old, tired ponies that were hardly up for the task. Emmet drove them silently, and wouldn't look up at Slim. 

Slim couldn't blame him. If he were in the old man's position, he doubted he'd have been able to stomach the sight of someone who could break a young girl in two -

_Stop it. She had it coming._

_But not from you, Slim. Not from you._

A crowd gathered closer as the three men approached a large building in the center of town, one adored with flags and banners and all manner of high falutin' decoration. From it, a few badged men emerged to stand near the doorway and watch both the tiny procession headed their way, and the group of folks rubbernecking to get a good view of what had to be the most excitement they'd ever seen.

One of the badged men separated himself from the pack. He shuffled up to Chris and tipped his hat with an uncertain smile. He looked from Chris to Slim to the wagon, and back at Chris again. "Mr. Coleman... everything alright?"

"No, Chuck." Chris turned away from the deputy and glared hotly at Slim. "Everything is not alright." Chris looked back at the deputy, and softly ordered, "Go get the sheriff, please. And Bob Harlow, too."

"The undertaker? Why? What happened?"

"Go take a look at Emmet's buckboard, Chuck." 

Deputy Chuck gaped at Chris for a moment, before scurrying to the wagon. It took him a long time to ask, "Who was she?"

"The most beautiful girl I've ever known," Chris said. 

"We didn't even know her name," Emmet said in a voice that sounded like wet sandpaper. 

Deputy Chuck reappeared from the side of the wagon, and asked Chris, "What happened to her?"

Slim stared at the sky and tried not to hear Chris' answer: "This thieving saddletramp chased her up Campbell Mountain to break her neck."

"You sure?" Poor Deputy Chuck looked like his eyes were going to pop out of his head.

"We're positive," Chris snarled.

"We was there," Emmet said.

Slim could feel the deputy's eyes on him, and he turned away from the open sky that he probably wouldn't be seeing again until he was at the end of a very real rope. He returned the deputy's hard look, stared the lawman right in the eye, but he kept his mouth shut. There was nothing else left to say. 

* * *

The stranger found the arrest process unsettlingly familiar. He might have been bored with it all, except that the idea that he was a common criminal who'd been through all this before made his skin crawl. He sat in the furthest corner of the surprisingly expansive cell block, and refused to let the other inmates engage him. 

They didn't try too hard to talk to him anyway. The deputies were the ones who seemed the most interested in needling him every chance they got, which was surprisingly often, considering how many cells he'd seen when he was first brought in (which was also a lot). They were more than happy to let him know exactly what the locals thought of strangers (not much), what the word on the street was regarding the scandalous hotel theft (nobody noticed anything until he got there), and what kind of side bets were going on in the saloons he hadn't had a chance to hit yet (everybody put their money down that the scruffy stranger would be swinging in the wind). The deputies told each other these awful stories right where he could see, or they talked to nearby inmates, reminding them that things could be so much worse for them, because they could be in the stranger's shoes. A couple of jailbirds had the nerve to make rude gestures at the stranger, his particular favorite being a finger drawn across the neck before pointing at him like a flesh colored pistol. 

The stranger ignored most of the coarse talk at first, because there was nothing he could do about any of it, and anyway it didn't really mean much - he was just gristle in the gossip mill. Someone else would come along and take the limelight off him, and in the meantime, a circuit judge might listen to him long enough to grant him some kind of leniency. Maybe send him off to a territorial prison, rather than string him up outright - after all, not all the stuff in Bonnie's room had been stolen the same night he'd arrived in town. They'd have to realize the saucy little skirt wasn't as innocent as she was making out. 

But then along came one Donald D. Donaldson, Esquire to put the stranger's faulty thinking right. "The D is for Donatello, no, I don't know why my folks thought that would be a good idea, no I don't want to change it, all my papers already have it all over the place, and no, friend, I don't think you stand a snowflake's chance in Diablo's kitchen."

Things with Donald D. Donaldson, Esquire only went downhill from there. "Play your cards right son, and I might be able to get you reduced to a year! And don't you worry about the things they say about prison - compared to what's going on in Arizona, this will be easy as pie!"

"A year? What do you mean a year?!"

"Well, friend, you're the one ripping through a crime spree all over our fine state! I don't know how they do things wherever you came from, but here in Colorado, you've got to toe the line. And anyway, you're doing much better than the last outsider we got. A real grizzly character, that one. Snapped some poor little girl's-"

The stranger kicked ineffectually at the metal posts that made up his bunk. "I don't give two shakes of a rattler's tail about the last outsider you got - if this is your idea of good defense, I want a new lawyer!"

"Mr. James!"

"And that _ain't_ my name! It's just some fool thing some old folks came up with so they wouldn't keep calling me boy!"

Mr. Donaldson smirked. "Well that's why _we_ keep using it - to keep from calling you boy. Imagine how demoralizing that would be here in the cells, or worse yet, out there in the courts. Now, as I was saying, Mr. James, you are doing much, much better than our last outsider. He's looking at the end of the line - a fate that could just as easily be yours, given the-"

"WHAT?" The stranger lunged at the lawyer, who went scurrying to the bars with a little cry. "You can't do that to me!"

"Hey!" A guard came stalking down to the cells, a short but heavy looking whip in his hand. "What the devil is going on in there?"

"Let me out," Donaldson said, gripping the bars for dear life. "He's worse than that killer!"

"Killer?" The stranger rushed to Donaldson's side, and was surprised by a stinging blow across the knuckles when the deputy whipped him one good. "Worse than a killer? All I want is a fair shake!"

"Get back, you sticky fingered varmint!" 

"Don't let him near me," Donaldson said, holding his briefcase up to the stranger as a shield.

"I don't want _you_ anywhere near _me_ ," the stranger cried. "I want a real lawyer!"

"I said _back_ ," growled the deputy. "Don't make me say it again..."

The stranger backed into a corner and watched as the guard unlocked the door for the cowardly lawyer. The trembling fool scurried out like there were demons on his tail. The moment the cell was locked, the stranger was back at the bars. "Hey," he called out to the guard, who was already stalking away from the cell. "How do I get a new lawyer?"

"Shut up! You're lucky he squeezed you in at all. We oughta leave you here to rot!"

"But I'm no criminal-"

"You're a thief!"

Desperation gripped the stranger, and he cried out in anguish. "You can't _do_ this to me! I'm not a bad man! I'm not!"

"You're a liar! And I can do whatever I want! You don't like it? Tough! Shoulda walked the straight and narrow!" At that, several other people - guards and inmates alike - began to clamor and shout their opinions. The whole jail went up in a ruckus, until the stranger could hardly hear himself think. 

A weapon discharged, the sound of the bullet pinging and whistling through the hard stucco walls, and the noise stopped in a near instant. The sound of spurred boots on hardwood grew louder, and before long, the town sheriff was staring down the deputy with the whip in his hand. "You wanna tell me what in the blue blazes of hell is going on back here?"

"Prisoner was getting rowdy, sir. Complaining he wants a new lawyer."

The sheriff looked at the stranger. "We'd be happy to oblige you, James, but we ain't got but the one prosecutor, one public defender, and that one high falutin lawyer that done set up shop here from back east, who just came running outta here like somebody lit a keg under his boots."

The stranger tried to force himself to calmness. "Well what about that public defender?"

"He took sick with the influenza a few weeks back. He ain't up to no defending right about now. If you want to wait until the circuit judge makes his next pass through here, you can do that, but I don't want to hear anything about no habeas corpus. There's a judge willing to take all we'll throw at him, and a lawyer willing to take your case on, and this can all be over in a few days at the outside." The sheriff scowled at him. "Truth be told, I'd rather have you out of here as soon as possible, whether you wanna wait or not. See, hanging onto a saddle tramp like you sends a message. It says that even when he's caught, a man can be fed and sheltered on the backs of law abiding citizens. It says that a man doesn't have to be good or decent. That there is no law, no order here in Buckeye. That's not a message I want getting out of my jail. The message I want out of my jail is _justice_."

"Yeah, well maybe your sick defender is interested in justice, but that clown that just took off outta here ain't interested in anything but making sure I pay for something I ain't done," the stranger said.

The sheriff smiled tightly. "The judge is a fair man. I've locked up men he's seen fit to acquit before. If you're innocent, it'll bear out."


	18. Jailhouse Blues

Slim found that time ceased to exist behind bars. They'd thrown him into a cell with a tiny, tiny window, way in the back, and left him to his own devices. At first, he'd counted the passage of days by scratching a bit of rock into the wall, like so many other prisoners before him had. But when Day One became Day Eight without so much as a mention of due process, Slim began to question the need to sit and wait for a trial. He'd killed her, after all, and had gone willingly to meet his fate. Why drag it out? Why waste two perfectly decent meals each day for who knew how long, when it would all end with a broken neck anyhow? He gave up counting the days, and chose instead to devote his energy to ripping his sheets to braid into a decent rope to choke himself with. 

He'd gotten far with his project, as far as cinching the sheet-rope around the highest joint in the cell that would take his weight, and was twisting the other end into a noose, when a well timed guard caught him. A cry went up, and soon a whole regiment of guards was in the cell with Slim, holding him down, dragging him out, chaining him up. "Oho no you don't! You'll get your day in court, and you'll like it! You ain't gonna escape justice!" He was chained to a wall for some time, while prisoners were rearranged, and then he was thrown back into a bare cell near the front, where a number of armed deputies could keep an eye on him with no effort at all. Suicide watch was what everyone whispered, until they found other things to gossip about.

Slim didn't bother to count the days after that. He ate when food was delivered (having learned the first couple of days in the new cell that he'd just be tied down and have warm chicken broth and oat gruel ladled into a funnel that sat in his mouth until he choked) and he answered when the guards had a random roll call, but otherwise he spent his time dreaming, whether his eyes were shut or not. The dreams were meaningless, just a way to pass the endless spiral of time that unfurled before him. The dreams dampened his curiosity when he heard stories about farmers collecting stolen pintos, and the card shark horse thieves who tried to frame saloon girls, and kept him from getting his hopes up about rumors regarding the arrival of circuit judges.

He was surprised, then, when a lawyer who introduced himself by repeating the same damn name three times breezed into his cell and announced his plan to get things moving right quick. Slim started to gather together the remnants of decent manners his mother had once taught him, but before he could do more than open his mouth, the sniveling little twerp of a lawyer held up an oily hand. "Now, now, listen friend, I've got a method to my madness, and the last thing we want now is to give the judge more ammunition! Don't tell me anything else, we don't want to damage the case any further than you've already done. Hold on, no protests! The best way out of a disaster is through it, and the quicker, the better! Now, if we play our cards right - and that means you keep quiet, and _don't_ give me any of your misdeeds - then when the judge calls on you tomorrow we should be able to skip right past a trial by jury, and your pain will all be over - _legally_."

In earlier times, Slim might have bellowed and bellyached about being railroaded to his doom. But after all the loss and shock, the only protest he could muster was, "Hope they kill me? That's my defense?"

The lawyer's smile was as patronizing as the infinitely patient tone he adopted. "My dear Mr. Sherman. Defense would be laughable, even if you hadn't practically admitted to guilt a few weeks back with your... bedsheet incident. Observe! You were accompanied by two witnesses, both of whom are well known to the people in town and, if not respected, then at least well sympathized with. You yourself practically turned yourself in. And throwing yourself on the mercy of the court would just end with you spending the rest of your life in chains - and you look to be a hale, hearty and _young_ man, with a long long loooong life ahead of you. And that would be with a fight. Just be a good boy, and this will all be over."

"I'm not so young," Slim muttered.

"Nonsense. In this day and age? Even locked away for the rest of his days, a man in his forties still has a good twenty years left in him. And Colorado takes good, good care of its prisoners - the state wants the men to pay for their crimes, not to wither away in a fit of self pity. And we all know there's no way to a dismissal for you. So face the facts, Mr. Sherman. The best possible outcome is a __fast__ one. Guard?"

Slim watched the lawyer slither away, and spent the rest of the evening mourning the loss of his own life. Quick by rope, or long by broken heart, it was all the same, wasn't it? Without Jess, there wasn't much point to anything. He couldn't even be bothered to work up the energy to hope for a quicker end - he'd tried that, and failed there, too. His whole life had been a series of charmed incidences that kept him at Jess Harper's side. With Jess gone, so were the charmed moments of salvation. There was nothing left for him to do but exist. Hell had already come for him. What difference did it really make where he spent eternity? On the ground or in it, nothing he did would change his world.

Deeper and deeper in his sorrow he sunk, until the evening guard warned him he'd be force fed again. Slim rallied enough to notice a bowl of cold soup and a hunk of sourdough waiting for him. He grunted and picked at his meal, hoping the guard would leave him in peace. It didn't seem he would, until the makings of a riot sounded up from somewhere in the back of the compound. The guard hurried away, leaving Slim to listen to the raving inmate whip the rest of the jail into a frenzy. 

" _You can't ** _do_** this to me! I'm not a bad man! I'm not!_ "

The universe was mocking Slim. The protesting voice sounded so much like Jess, that for just a moment, joy tried to reignite the ashes of hope in Slim's heart. But Jess was gone, dragged off by a pack of hounds to his final rest. 

Had anyone in Laramie found what was left of Jess?

Was anyone looking for Slim?

Did they all believe that stodgy superintendent who accused Jess of robbing the stage line?

Maybe the universe wasn't mocking Slim at all. Maybe this was supposed to be his wake up call. Who else would clear Jess' name? Even if Slim had to hang for killing Hope, alright. But not without telling his story. Not without getting word back to Laramie - no matter what happened to Slim, it had to be known, Jess died doing the right thing. 

His appetite suddenly roared to life, and Slim scarfed his meal down in a matter of minutes. Then he crawled into his bunk and slept, the first decent sleep he'd had since Jess last left his side. There was still one last thing to do for Jess before Slim could give up his life just yet. 


	19. Contemptuous Proceedings

With sunrise came tepid porridge and the announcement of His Honor's arrival by the morning stage. Slim sat and listened in wonder as he heard the whole jail come to life - or maybe he simply had finally come out of his stupor long enough to notice the activity. Whatever the case, the men - jailed and jailer alike - shuffled about with pent up anxiety as prisoners were chained together and shuffled off to meet with the judge.

Slim's own anxiety shot up, as he contemplated his own appearance before the bench in a few hours. Though he still believed in his purpose, he was exhausted, and wanted nothing more to simply lay down and let the lawyer take over. He'd confess and plead out, and then the judge wouldn't have to listen to anything, and that would be that. But the voice of Not-Jess kept ringing through his ears, reminding him not to let go. _Jess wasn't a bad man. They've got to remember that!_

Just when Slim thought he might go mad if he had to watch another group of men marched out of the jail without him, the rattling of keys at his cell signaled the beginning of the end of his long wait. "Alright, Sherman. Let's go."

Slim allowed himself to be chained up and led to the line for the slaughterhouse. He was taken out of the cell blocks as part of a small group of other frightening looking men - men with deep scars on their faces and hands, and foul mouths that only the threat of a good whipping - or the delivery of said threat - could silence. They were marched right past the exit that lead to the street, through the desks and lobby of the jail, to another doorway that opened into a grand hall. 

Through this hall, which was decorated with marble and smooth colored stones from various regions, they were herded first deeper into the belly of the great building, then up a flight of plushly carpeted stairs. At the top of the stairs was a wide vestibule, the focal point of which was a heavy set of double doors. At each of the far ends of the vestibule along the same wall, sat a single door, so that there was either three offices at the top of the stairs, or three entrances to the same room. A deputy stood sentry in front of the double doors in the center, and the group was marched past him to the single door on the right. 

The three sets of doorways opened into a mostly empty courtroom, big enough to hold at least forty spectators all at once, and nearly as plush and ornate as the downstairs hall. The spectator gallery was bisected by a large path that lead from the set of double doors, where Slim presumed the guard waited in silence on the other side. A pair of narrower aisles on the outside of the spectator area corresponded to each of the single doors. Slim watched as another small group of inmates shuffled out of the narrow aisle across the room through the opposite door. 

At the front of the wide, center path, was an elevated desk made of beautiful dark, hard wood. A stocky man in a black robe sat behind it, where he watched the shuffling of inmates with the sort of calm contemplative expression that only a man who had the weight of the world on his shoulders seemed to bear. An old, wizened geezer who looked like he'd come west right after the Boston Tea Party hovered near the bench, occasionally shining his badge with a too long shirt sleeve, and another man sat a little ways away from the bench, pen and paper at the ready. Across from them sat a pair of men, one of whom Slim recognized as the lawyer he'd taken to thinking of as Don Times Three. The other man, he assumed, had to be the prosecution, then.

Once the other group of prisoners was out of the court room, and Slim and his group had stopped shuffling long enough for the chains to stop clinking together, the shriveled up old-timer cleared his throat and bellowed to the near empty room, "All rise for the Honorable Judge Clarence Taylor." The lawyers got to their feet, Don Three Times popping up like a jack-in-the-box, the other fellow taking his slow sweet time. One of the escorting deputies handed the old fella some paperwork, who passed it up to the judge to inspect, before taking most of it back to the unknown lawyer.

Finally, Judge Taylor said in a soft but firm voice, "Be seated." Everyone sat down, and the judge continued, "Court is now in session. The record will show the continued arraignment of the local prisoners for the township of Buckeye, in the state of Colorado." So began the slow process of unchaining and reattaching each individual from the pack for his turn at arraignment. Slim watched in growing horror as each chained man was called to stand before the judge with the same lazy fool of a lawyer, and laid himself out like a sacrifice before the court. The judge looked bored as he set dates for sentencing and sent each man back to sit with the waiting guards. 

"Matthew Sherman Junior, approach the bench," the bailiff called, in a voice loud enough to be heard west of San Francisco.

Slim got wearily to his feet and took his place next to Don Times Three. Judge Taylor shuffled his paper pile around, and asked the papers, rather than Slim, "How do you plead?" 

"Not guilty."

Don Times Three whipped his head around to look at Slim, and the prosecutor unsuccessfully swallowed a laugh. The judge banged his gavel and glared at the prosecutor. "Mr. Prescott, are we to have a repeat of this morning's foolishness?"

The prosecutor's face turned a deep scarlet. "No, Your Honor."

"So then you _do_ recognize that these men are in fact allowed to plead for the opportunity to go to trial, and not simply bow to your scare tactics?"

"We don-"

"So we _are_ to have a repeat of this morning's foolishness?"

"No, no, Your Honor."

"Good, because I'm just about out of patience with you, with that dolt Donaldson, with these infernal _deputies_ in this backwater, and with the obvious bias this town holds against anyone who didn't precede the current set of councilmen to this town - myself included. Now, you might have railroaded Mr. Donaldson here into doing your bidding, but you won't railroad me. If this man is guilty, then you'll be able to prove it, without a shadow of a doubt. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

"It had better be. State's evidence?"

The prosecutor took a moment to compose himself before he spoke. "In addition to the defendant practically delivering himself to the nearest set of authorities, we have two eye witnesses who, when interviewed separately and thoroughly, your Honor, have presented accountings which match precisely what was found at the scene. Given the severity of the crime, and the fact that the defendant has already made an attempt on his own life, the state requests that bail be denied - for the defendant's protection as well as that of the case."

The judge snorted. "I wouldn't let a man accused of taking the last biscuit from your morning plate walk the streets without an armed escort, Prescott. Have you anything to add, Donaldson?"

Don Three Times looked lost as he said, "No, Your Honor. Just... I... erm, no."

"Well, spit it out, man," the judge snapped.

Donaldson looked at Slim nervously. "My client is entering his plea against counsel's advice."

The judge pursed his lips. "That's likely because your client has some vague notion of how law works in the rest of the United States. Fortunately for him, I too have some ideas about how trial law is meant to operate. Bail is set at fifty thousand dollars. The preliminary hearing is to be held no later than ten o'clock in the morning, ten working days from today."

Slim's jaw dropped with the slam of the gavel. The prosecutor harrumphed and nearly won himself an apparent second contempt of court charge, but there was no reason for the state to be unhappy with the bail - there was no way Slim could raise that kind of money even if he was being held right in Laramie, with his own bank holdings across the street and a town full of loving citizens who'd vouch for him to the Devil himself. He listened in awe as the judge dismissed his group of inmates, and wondered if he would still have the resolve to face down a jury, the prosecution and his own idiot lawyer.

* * *

_A few hours earlier_

Breakfast went by in a blur, and the stranger found himself chained to a gang and hustled at dawn's first light to a second story courtroom as folks whispered about the important arrival on the morning stage. Before he knew it, he was shoved forward at the demand that "John Doe, also known as Jesse James, approach the bench."

The stranger ignored the tittering laughter of his fellow inmates, and dragged himself to stand before the judge. 

"Which is it," the judge asked. "John Doe, or Jesse James?"

"Your Honor, the defendant cla-"

"I was _asking_ the _defendant_ , Mr. Prescott," the judge said sharply. The stranger raised an eyebrow as the prosecutor snapped his mouth shut, and he gulped nervously at the robed man who had the power to make or break every chained man in the room. "Well?"

The stranger cleared his throat. "I don't know my name, Your Honor."

The judge raised an eyebrow of his own before asking, "You don't know your name, so you chose the name of a notorious bank robber?"

"It wasn't my choice, sir."

"You'd have chosen John Doe?"

"I choose it now," the stranger said.

"He hadn't chosen it when he'd signed the hotel register, Your Honor," Mr. Prescott intervened.

The judge smiled thinly. "Why, Mr. Prescott. I do believe you would like to be held in contempt of court."

The prosecutor smiled back, rather nervously. "No, sir."

"Good. We have a long, long day ahead of us, Mr. Prescott. According to this docket, we are going to be together for at least a day, possibly a second, should we need to take frequent pauses such as this one. Let's not have any sort of foolishness between us?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

"Now. Mister... Doe. You don't remember your name, but you stand before me, not with intent to request a competency hearing, but to enter a plea. I have to say, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of having you speak your mind to such an important matter if you don't know who you actually are. How can you say whether or not you've done what you've been accused of?"

The stranger looked back at Donaldson, who smiled stupidly and gestured back to the judge. Apparently, Donaldson wasn't the kind of lawyer who believed in speaking up for his clients. _Okay, then._ "Your Honor, I lost my memory several months ago in an attack which I still don't know the details of. I've had... dreams, but I don't understand them, and I don't try. But I can remember very clearly that I woke up in the care of an elderly couple who nursed me back to health, and I know what's happened to me since then - at least, in the same way any man knows everything about what's happened to him in the last ten or fifteen weeks."

The judge looked thoughtful. "Do you know the date?"

The stranger shook his head. "Not to the day. I haven't had access to a newspaper since my incarceration. But I know it's summer time. I know I was shot in the spring. And I know that it's got to be around the Fourth of July, because the last paper I did see was discussing the times and route of the parade."

Judge Taylor leaned back and considered all of this. "You are aware, Mr. Doe, that if you are found guilty of your crimes, you will not be able to fall back on the defense of insanity? That what the jury decides can only be overturned in the course of the proper legal channels, by a United States Supreme Court?"

The stranger grew nervous. But what choice did he have? If he claimed insanity now, he would certainly be asked to serve time. If he went forward with a trial, it wasn't up to him to prove he hadn't taken those things - but he also knew that he wasn't going to get any help from anyone in this godforsaken town, either. Still, he had to fight. "I understand, Your Honor."

To his surprise, the judge smiled warmly at him. "Very well, Mr. Doe. How do you plead?"

"Not guilty."

The deputies immediately began to grumble, and the other four jailbirds began to jeer. Mr. Prescott himself bellowed, "That's ridiculous!"

"Order in the court!" The judge's soft, crisp voice carried surprising power when he shouted, and the entire room fell silent almost instantly. "I absolutely will _not_ tolerate any such horseplay in this courtroom! Let the record show, I hold Alan Prescott in contempt of court, with a fine to be paid of fifty dollars, _and_ if he continues to protest, that fine will double!" Judge Taylor narrowed his eyes at the prosecutor, and said in a voice so quiet the stranger had to strain to hear, "Every man is allowed his day in court, and this one is absolutely no exception." He instructed the clerk to set a date for the preliminary hearing for five days away in the court calendar. "Don't you worry, Mr. Doe. No matter what these people feel, you'll be given your day free and clear."


	20. Merciful Justice

The stranger sat in his cell and marked the passing of time with cold, silent dread. His lawyer - _everyone's_ lawyer, apparently - didn't bother to check in with him for the near week he waited for his turn at justice. The guards were too busy with prisoner transfers and court dates to continue with their favorite pastime of needling the stranger. Before long, the jail soon took on an eerie silence as the prisoners went one by one to the big prison in Canon City. It seemed no one went home happy, or served a few days here in the local lock up for his crimes.

All too soon, though, the big day had arrived, and the stranger found himself sitting in a courtroom that was filled to standing room only,while the prosecutor preened and postured at the bench. "Your honor, my first witness is an expert in law enforcement, particularly out in the open wilds where human contact is often a rarity."

Even with only a buffoon of a lawyer to save him, the stranger wasn't too concerned about all of Prescott's blustering. Neither, apparently was Donaldson. While Prescott blathered on for an increasingly irritable looking judge, Donaldson leaned closer to the stranger and whispered, "Prescott must be sweating! He never pulls out an expert first thing! Maybe this is gonna work out after all..."

Judge Taylor broke into Prescott's speech. "Mr. Prescott, before the winter solstice begins, if you don't mind."

Prescott didn't miss a beat. "I call Sheriff Harrison Turner to the stand."

The stranger's blood ran cold at the sound of the witness' name. _Turner? Maybe... maybe it's not really him..._ He turned slowly in his seat, and looked out into the fully packed gallery for signs of this expert witness. The whole audience was already staring at the bailiff who repeated the call for witness at the opened the double doors. A moment later, the officer stepped aside, and everyone got their first good look at the witness. 

_Oh no._ The young sheriff who'd taken coffee and biscuits from dear old Eunice Ward stood in the doorway, hat in hand. The sheriff who'd have been hot on the stranger's trail if Clyde Ward'd had his way stepped onto the soft carpet that ran the length from the double doors to the cage that separated the spectators from the proceedings. The sheriff who'd looked the stranger up and down and thought he looked to be a damned fine match for the wanted poster he'd shown the Wards held his head high as he pushed through the gate and crossed the space between the lawyers and the bench. 

The sheriff that the stranger had run so blindly from just a few days ago settled himself in the witness seat and turned sharp, narrowed eyes on the quaking stranger. 

It was a subtle expression, just a shift of skin around the eyes, nothing the rubbernecking audience would see, but it was enough to get the message across to the stranger. As far as the expert witness was concerned, the stranger was guilty as sin, and if he couldn't take him in for the stage robbery, then he'd make sure someone got him on something.

Donaldson was still grinning through Turner's credentials, and seemed completely unaware of the stranger's silent meltdown. The poor fool didn't stay ignorant for long though. Donaldson's face began to droop as Turner laid out for the court his first encounter with the stranger, and the wanted poster from the fine town of Laramie. Donaldson's eyes began to bulge as Prescott wheeled in a map for all to see, so that Turner could plot out the last complaints he'd taken before he'd gotten the telegram to come to court. The path was straight as an arrow, starting at the Ward property, which sat not too far from a road between Laramie and Cheyenne, all the way down to a pass that would lead a man right to Buckeye - a path, incidentally, that Sheriff Turner took himself to get to the trial. Poor Donaldson finally had to put his head on the desk as Turner described the stranger's violent behavior, the ease with which he took off with some poor farmer's horse, and the easy way he cleaned out a wagon train. Turner closed his bludgeoning testimony with the unnecessary, "It is my professional opinion that the defendant is obviously up to no good."

The audience grumbled and harrumphed and sounded like a bunch of squalling old folks at a church revival.

"Oh lord," Donaldson said, just loud enough for the stranger to hear. "I can't fix this. I cannot possibly fix this."

Judge Taylor banged his gavel. "I will have order in this court. Any further outbursts from the gallery, and I will close these proceedings to the public." Taylor looked at Donaldson, and rolled his eyes up into his skull. "Mr. Donaldson, are you awake?"

"Unfortunately, Your Honor." He kept his head on the desk. The stranger thought he might be sick himself.

Taylor rubbed his forehead with both hands. "In that case, your witness, Mr. Donaldson."

Donaldson got to his feet as if it was his freedom on the line, rather than his client's. But he rallied, and managed to pull himself together when he faced down the angry looking sheriff. "Sheriff Turner. Your testimony indicates that you believe he is wanted for a crime committed outside of the state of Colorado. Do you actually believe he is guilty of this crime?"

"Yes."

"You also assert that he was at the very least present during the commission of other crimes for which he is not currently on trial. Do you believe he committed these crimes?"

"Yes." Turner looked annoyed.

"You were investigating these crimes yourself?"

"I believe I said that already." 

"Did you find any evidence that my client had any excess funds, either on his person, or in a secret cache, at any time in your investigation?"

"I don't follow."

"What I mean to ask, Sheriff, is did you find the stage line money he purportedly stole?"

Prescott hollered like an angry child. "Objection, Your Honor, that's irrelevant!"

"On the contrary," Donaldson said smoothly. "My client is facing a criminal trial for stealing from gambling saloon guests, and the evidence of his theft was found easily in a working girl's hotel room, a room she offered to share with my client. If the man who'd stolen the stage line funds is the same man who'd hidden today's evidence in the hotel room, then the stage line money must be sitting out in the open somewhere, perhaps along the line the witness purports my client to have taken!"

"I object," Prescott said again, slamming his desk with both hands. "Counsel is drawing leading conclusions!"

Judge Taylor banged his gavel. "I have had enough of this entire farce! Prescott, your 'expert' witness has a bone to pick with a man who has features that match a wanted poster - features that you, I, the bailiffs, and a good third of the gallery also share! I've a good mind to throw the sheriff out of my court and to lock you up for the next thirty days! And as for you, Donaldson, your lack of preparation is as obvious as the nose on your face. The two of you are an embarrassment to the bar! Bailiff, release the prisoner!"

Prescott jumped to his feet. "What?"

"I'm throwing this case out! This is the most heinous case of railroading I've seen - especially since I know people have complained about their precious valuables going missing long before the last week or so before the defendant first showed up in town. If you all plan on arresting him for horse theft, or aggressive gambling, or frightening old ladies, that's fine, but you make damn sure you find some evidence that the court can use, and then you take that foolishness back to Wyoming where it belongs! I don't want to see this man in my court again until you can prove he had something to do with the _ongoing_ problem _here_ in Buckeye! Court is adjourned! Why is the prisoner still in irons?!"

The bailiff released the stranger's wrists, while everyone else sat staring in shock. Donaldson recovered first. "You'd better get out of the state quick as you can, friend, before the judge comes to his senses - or Prescott wrangles something that'll stick to you. Good luck!" He pumped the stranger's limp hand, and headed out of the courtroom. The stranger followed in a daze, practically sliding down the stairs on oiled boot heels, and out of the Town Hall, into the warm Colorado sunshine.

It was strange to be out in the open again, no chains to bind him, no stinking deputy breathing heavy over his shoulder. The stranger wandered into the street warily, afraid of a trap waiting to spring again. He needed to get the hell out of Buckeye, and fast. 

"What the hell are you doing out here, cowboy?" One of the deputies, the one who'd whipped him the first time he'd met that idiot lawyer, stalked out of the Town Hall, hand hovering dangerously near his hip. 

The stranger turned, hands in the air, and stepped back. "I've been released. The case was dismissed."

A few people shuffled out of the Hall, talking in animated whispers about who knew what. They paused when they saw the stranger. One of the passersby, a stiff older fella in a fancy suit said, grudgingly, "Congratulations, Mr. Doe. You should make a new start."

"Somewhere else," another man said, and this was met with a lot of agreeable mumbling before the group moved on. 

The deputy relaxed his stance just a little bit, but he still stared hard at the stranger. "You should start walking. It's a long way to the next town. Better yet," the deputy said with a nasty smile, "just to show there's no hard feelings, I'm gonna do you one better." He dug in his pocket and pulled out a wallet, and produced a couple of bills. "That'll get you a seat on the stage - not too far, mind you. But it'll get you out of here, and away from temptation - both yours, and ours."

The stranger looked at the money like it would bite him. "How do I pay it back?"

"It's a gift. See, this really is a nice little town, cowboy - so long as we keep to the right element." The deputy pointed across the street, a couple doors down from the saloon where the stranger's troubles had all come to a head. "Stage line office is thataway. Have a nice trip, partner."

The stranger stared at the money a moment longer, before taking it with a shaking hand. He ignored the deputy's nasty laughter, and crossed the street. 

There was something soothingly familiar about the interior of the stage office. Though he knew he'd never been there before, there were things in the office that hinted at the puzzle that was his mind. There were maps and brochures and time tables, all of which made the stranger a little wistful, a little homesick. 

Then he thought about Sheriff Turner's testimony, and the wanted poster for a stage line robbery in Laramie. He wandered over to the map that took up nearly all of one wall, and studied the crisscrossing lines that marked the various stage routes. Sure enough, not too far from the largest spot marked "Buckeye", maybe a couple spots away, was a spot marked "Laramie". 

"Help you, friend?" The man behind the ticket counter was watching the stranger with a small smile. "Have a question, maybe?"

"Maybe." The stranger turned away from the map. "When's the next stage arriving?"

"Depends, friend. The northbound stage should be coming through any minute now. The southern stage should have just gone through, so there'll be another one showing up in a few hours. No later than suppertime, for sure." 

"And Laramie... that's northbound, right?"

"Certainly is, my friend. You want a ticket to Laramie?"

"No!" The clerk jumped, and the stranger cursed his roughness. He tried again, more gently this time. "I want to go in the opposite direction. Please."

"You're the boss," the clerk said cheerfully. "Any place in particular? Fort Collins? Denver, maybe?"

The stranger put the money the deputy had given him on the counter. "How far will that get me?"

The clerk frowned a little. "Not far. I can probably get you up to Cheyenne, but that's gonna take you that much closer to Laramie."

"North."

"Yep. But Cheyenne's a big city, nice and prosperous. You could get work there, a strong looking fella like you, and you'll be able to pay your way to an eastbound coach in no time! Or to get a train - I hear they got a railstop up in Cheyenne now."

The stranger looked at the money on the counter. "I... I'm not sure."

"I'll be here all day, friend. I close up shop an hour after the last stage leaves town - so you can buy a ticket on an early morning stage without getting up to wait in line at the crack of dawn. The rates won't change while you think about it, son."

The stranger narrowed his eyes at the clerk. "Why are you being so nice to me?"

The clerk shrugged. "Should I be mean?"

"The last time someone in this town was nice to me, she set me up, got me thrown in the clink. Nobody else wants to take a chance on a stranger."

The clerk laughed outright at that. "Oh, these old fools, they act like this place is their royal birthright or some such foolishness. I can tell you the names of damn near every person out there on the street, and which coach they came in on, and when. Strangers don't bother me none. Of course, I make my living dealing with strangers all the time, even moreso than the fools over at the hotel."

The stranger nodded. "They got one friendly face over there, but she'll turn on you in a heartbeat."

The clerk's face darkened. "Bonnie. You must be the fella they busted for taking all that stuff." The clerk spat on the floor. "Tell you what, friend. You go on down to the saloon and you pay her your respects, buy yourself a nice steak dinner, and I'll take the cost of that dinner off your ticket. Get yourself a bottle of whiskey too. A good one. And bring it with you. We'll have a drink to whoever it is that finally puts that girl in the ground."

The stranger's eyebrows went up. "Well, I never said I wanted her dead."

"Course not - never said I did neither. But we can still toast the lucky son of a gun who's gonna figure her wily ways out before he gets burned."

The stranger nodded faintly, though he wasn't so sure that was the kind of thing he wanted to drink to. Angry as he was with Bonnie, he thought what she needed was a good long talk with the nasty lawmen in their fancy ivory tower, not a permanent stay on Boot Hill. 

"Hurry on now," the clerk said. "If you have to wait with the dinner crowd, they might try to skimp. Too many mouths to feed and all that."

The stranger nodded again and stumbled out of the stage office. The street was busy enough, and folks were going on with their day, probably wrapping up their afternoon business before hitching up to head for supper. He'd hoped no one would pay him any mind, but as soon as he stepped out into the street, heads began to turn, eyes began to track him, and soon he could feel the burning stare of the whole town on the tender flesh at the nape of his neck. He set his jaw and went right to the saloon, and pretended not to notice half the men in the street follow him up to the door.

He stepped up to the bar, and nearly turned tail and ran - the deputy who'd given him the cash was there, and he was talking to that hellcat Bonnie. But the deputy was so busy trying to comfort her in this time of terrible loss and failed justice, that the stranger could have jumped up on the bar and called a square dance, and the fool wouldn't have noticed. 

The stranger turned to the barkeep and asked, soft as he could, "Can I get a bottle of whiskey?"

"Ain't you supposed to be in jail?"

The stranger bristled and glanced at the deputy. "The case was thrown out. Please, can I buy the whiskey? I'm on my way out of here, and I don't know where I'll get another."

"I didn't give you that money to buy whiskey, stranger," the deputy said.

The stranger swore softly. He'd hoped his luck would hold out just a tiny bit longer, that maybe he'd be able to get away without a fight, but it wasn't to be. "The clerk in the stage office wanted to drink to my health. He offered to spot me the cost of the whiskey."

"He don't have no call to do that. If you're not planning on getting the next stage out of here-"

"Thief!" Bonnie slammed her palm on the bar. "You put all that stuff in my room, tried to pin something on me-"

"Forget it." The stranger stalked out of the bar, and pushed through the crowd that'd gathered on the sidewalk. He could hear the deputy throwing fighting words at his back, but what could he do? His empty gunbelt had been confiscated when he was arrested, and he didn't dare go back in to kick up a fuss about it now - and even if he did have a gun, there was no way any of the witnesses in the street would dare tell the truth were he to draw in self defense. So the stranger walked straight-backed into the stage office, and said to the surprised looking clerk, "I'm afraid you'll have to buy your own drink, friend. My money's not good anywhere but here, and that's only to get me the hell out of this town."

The clerk grimaced and pulled out a ticket. "One way fare to Cheyenne, Wyoming. Cheer up, friend. It's a big city, one of the biggest in the west. You'll be able to blend in, get your bearings, and before you know it, you'll forget all about this nasty little spot in your life. The stage'll be coming in any minute now. Why don't you take a load off over here, out of the sun? I'll make sure you don't miss your ride out of here."

The stranger paid and went back to the door, where he could watch the street. "Thanks, friend, but if it's all the same to you, I wanna make damn sure I get that stage myself."


	21. False Start

"This is Cheyenne, folks," came the unnecessary bellow from outside the slowing stage coach - unnecessary because the city had risen up from the desert like a mountainous outcropping, and had swallowed the stage some time back. The plume of trail dust that had plagued the stage settled down inside the coach, coating all the passengers in a fine layer of powdery grime. One young lady close to the stationary window hacked and choked in a most unladylike way, and nearly drowned out the rest of the driver's announcement. "Welcome to Wyoming. If you're getting off here, there's visitor's information in the office." 

The fella who'd been riding shotgun appeared at the door and opened it wide, and took up talking where the driver left off. "If y'all are riding on, this is a real fine place to stop over for dinner, and you can take an evening stage - at no extra charge, of course. Just show the driver your fare. This here's also a good place to stay overnight, what with them having beds and all, instead of a bunch a wild mustangs pullin' a coffin on wheels." The driver and shotgun rider bellowed with laughter, but the other five people shoved into the coach with the stranger scowled even harder before struggling to get off. His mouth twitched a little, but he kept his laughter to himself. He could understand why the other passengers weren't too amused. Not everyone was up for gallows humor, and hardly anybody who'd been stuffed into the tiny, hard box on wheels for however many miles the others had been would be up for that kind of joke. Sure, he could understand them not laughing.

"Tough crowd," the shotgun fella said when it was the stranger's turn to alight. "You'da thunk they'da took one a those fancy locomotives if they don't like our company."

The stranger shrugged. "Some folks are always unhappy." He tipped his hat to the man and wandered out into the street, leaving the stage line and the trail dust and memories of Buckeye, Colorado behind.

Cheyenne was big. Really big. Tall buildings lined the wide street, and the wooden walks that kept the ladies from dragging their pretty skirts through the dust and muck were wide enough to fit a six team coach. Smack in the middle of the road, just a few yards down from the Cheyenne stage office, was an eight-sided open area that was separated from the rest of the thoroughfare by an intermittent white picket fence. Green grass grew in the cordoned off area, and there were a number of fruit trees that shaded several strategically situated benches. Several couples, young and old alike, sat on the benches and made sweet faces at one another.

A pair of men brushed past the stranger. One wore working clothes, jeans and gingham. The other wore so fine a suit the stranger doubted he'd have remembered a fancier one even if he did recall all the events of his life. Both men tipped their hats and smiled broadly as they passed, murmuring quiet but gentle apologies for the jostling. 

The stranger waved belatedly at the men, amazed by how differently people could be from one town to another. He hoped it was an omen of things to come, and made his way to the nearest hotel. 

The clerk turned him away gently, and sent him further down the street to a much cheaper hotel that didn't look near so inviting out front. The inside of the place was just as unappealing, but it was clean and had a roof overhead, and the price let him get two whole nights with what was left of his traveling money, so the stranger didn't complain too much. The door locked okay, and the sheets smelled sweet. This wouldn't be so terrible.

The nervousness that had skittered up and down the sides of the stranger's neck began to settle down. This was a big town, but a friendly one. Maybe Cheyenne was big enough and friendly enough to hide him from whatever misfortune might await him in Laramie. Maybe it'd be alright to settle in for a short stay after all.

* * *

Bright light streamed in through the tattered curtains that hung over the sagging old window. The stranger blinked miserably as the morning sun blasted through the last wisps of the latest iteration of his usual dream - instead of being buried alive, he was lost in a fog, and a chasm opened up at his feet as a rich, velvety voice called out from the mists. He couldn't make out any words, only that there was a voice calling plaintively in the thick, white fog, and that the voice was looking for him. 

He shook his head, irritated with himself for dwelling on the foolishness of a sleep-induced fairy tale for so long, and for sleeping until the sun was high enough in the sky to cut through sleep in the first place. He was burning daylight, and was going to be sleeping under the open range with no weapon to keep him safe if he didn't get some kind of work soon. 

He asked at the desk if they knew of anyone who'd need a pair of strong hands, but the clerk laughed and turned away. 

Undaunted, the stranger headed out into the street, and began asking the businesses that lined the main thoroughfare if they needed any help. The faces were friendly and welcoming enough when they thought he might come spend some money, but as soon as they realized what he really wanted, the faces shuttered quickly. Still, they used courteous language to wish him better luck while they ushered him out of their shops as quick as they could. No one shouted him down or threw him out on his ear or accused him of being a thief, so he counted himself lucky. Soon though, his queries joined the town's gossip mill, and he found himself stonewalled at every open door. After being denied entry four doors in a row, he packed it in and moved off the main drag to the smaller avenues that branched out in all directions from the town square.

Discouragement began to seep in at the edges of his enthusiasm when the sun set and rose, and still no one had any offers for him, not even a bit of day labor in exchange for a hard roll or some jerky. He was hungry and a bit concerned about the fact that he no longer had a room to return to, and that most of the townspeople had seen him wandering the streets without a gunbelt.

He came to a church long after sunset, and stood in front of the pretty little white-washed fence that separated its beautiful lush grass and flowerbeds from the sidewalk. A house stood next door, separated from the church by the same fencing, though there was a little side gate that connected the two properties. The stranger could smell food, and he could see the puff of smoke coming from the house's chimney. He thought about moving over to knock on the door, to see if maybe the folks inside were connected to the church. But he also thought about the friendly faces in town that shut down when he asked for a little help. He didn't want to be turned away at so late an hour, especially not by church folk. Getting on a preacher's good side could do a man a lot of good getting him on a whole town's good side - and that could work in the other direction, too. Best to wait until daylight, when a preacher might not be so wary of a begging stranger, than to interrupt him when he's trying to settle his family in for the night.

The stranger decided that until he had a chance to see just exactly what kind of preacher the church had, his best bet was simply to walk on into the sanctuary to spend the night. If the door was locked, there'd be no point in trying to get on the preacher's good side, because chances were there wasn't one. He tried not to think to hard about what he'd have to do if the doors were indeed locked, eased open the front gate, and went up the stone walk. He put his hands to the doors, held his breath, and blew it out in relief when the door swung open silently on well oiled hinges.

He pulled off his hat, unconsciously shielding his scarred and empty belly with it, and crept inside. He stood staring at what he could see of the simple altar in the moonlight that filtered in through the dark glass windows. He could make out a large, plain wooden cross on the wall behind the altar. It loomed over him, and he wanted to turn tail and run for the hills. But he couldn't run on empty, and anyway, what better place to beg for a miracle than at a church?

He lowered his eyes, screwed up the last shreds of his courage, and tiptoed up the aisle to the altar, elbows tucked in. He was afraid to touch the pews as he passed, lest he awaken the Almighty himself, who'd surely bring the whole city of Cheyenne down on his head for trespassing. 

When he got to the altar, he dropped to his knees. In the days since awakening in the barn, he'd wished and hoped and coveted as hard as a man could. But until that moment, he had no idea that he could be a praying man. He leaned against the simple pine pulpit, and touched the little cross that was carved into the pale wood. His throat was dry, and no sound escaped his mouth, but his lips formed words meant for no earthly ears. "I don't know where I'm going, or where I've been. But if I've done wrong, then I'm sorry. If this is my punishment, just give me a sign. I'm hungry. I'm tired. I-" -and here his silent whisper faltered - "-Oh, God, I'm afraid." He hadn't shirked from the feeling. He knew he was afraid, from the moment he emerged from the darkness. But it hurt his pride and heart all the same to say it. "I don't... I don't think I could stand it if I knew that I was supposed to be floating, alone and unwanted. I feel so separated. So cut off. Is this... Am I supposed to be alone? Am I wrong to want to find a family I wouldn't recognize if I saw them?"

If there was an answer to his questions, he couldn't hear them. The silence had an echo all its own, and it reverberated through the little wooden building, until it settled over him like a blanket. He lifted his head from the pulpit and looked up past it, to the equally simple cross that hung on the wall behind it.

He wondered, why plain pine? Why not gold, why no inlaid stones or glass bits? Where were the cups, the fancy woodwork? The lace and linen, the stained glass windows, the thick, sweet smell of incense? He turned to the pew and took in the simple wooden benches, the low ceiling, the flat wood walls that held no organ pipes, no mysterious secret balconies. 

An old memory tried to surface, childhood, perhaps. A long, dusty walk, behind a man wearing... he didn't know. Bells rang. People cried. He cried too, maybe. He'd lost his faith then, he knew that. Somewhere along the way, though, he'd found it. He must have, because he was sitting in a church, a simple church, with simple trappings, one that probably never smelled like sickly sweet smoke, where the man in front probably wore pants and a good shirt like everyone else, where the ladies could hope to marry off their sons to the preacher's daughters, because he had some.

He got to his feet, surprised by the difficulty of the task, and went to one of the pews. He dropped himself in it with a sigh, and told himself to quit sniveling like an old worried hen. He needed rest, food, some money, and a way out of Cheyenne, in that order. He couldn't do anything about leaving town until he had money, and he couldn't really get his hands on money until he'd done something about the grumbling in his stomach. But he couldn't do anything about any of it until he'd spent a little time off his aching feet, and anyway, the other three things involved other people some kind of way, for now, anyhow. Rest was easy and plentiful and for the taking, in a dark church, after sundown. He stretched himself out on the seat, closed his eyes, and was back to his strange dreams in the space of a breath.

* * *

A gentle pressure on his shoulder pulled the stranger from his misty dreamscape. The gray fog dissipated first to darkness, then to warm sunlight that filtered into a wide, wooden room. He blinked, confused, at the polished wood slab underneath him.

"Good morning."

The stranger pushed off the wooden slab with a gasp and reached automatically for a gun that wasn't tied to his hip. 

A tall, sandy, bespectacled man, dressed all in black, save his crisp white collar, jumped back and held his hands up. "Thank the Lord you aren't armed. Do you usually shoot up churches, friend?"

The stranger's sigh was part embarrassment, part relief. This was not the way he'd wanted to meet the preacher. "I don't usually hide in churches," he mumbled.

"I see. And why were you hiding in here?"

The stranger cringed, annoyed at himself for his word choice. "Wasn't really hiding. I needed a place to sleep. Didn't think the townfolks would appreciate a tramp sleeping on their boardwalks, and since I lost my iron, I don't feel safe sleeping in the open by the highway."

The preacher raised an eyebrow. "Why would you need a gun to sleep under the stars?"

The stranger couldn't help his snort of laughter. "Because there's snakes and coyotes out there. And animals, too."

"Unlike you, I take it?"

The stranger shrugged. "I've been accused of being a thief. But I don't think I am."

"You don't think? Is it open for debate?"

The stranger's stomach growled, loudly.

"What were you accused of stealing? Food?"

"I wish it were that simple." The stranger told his story - waking in the barn, frightening his benefactors, the first suspicions, the impossible charges, the release that amounted to his being run out of town. "I did steal that horse, that's true - and I shouldn't have done that, I know. But if they'd bothered to charge me for it, I'd have stood before the judge and took my punishment."

The preacher cocked an eyebrow. "You admit to stealing a horse, but you're not a thief?"

"No, I'm not."

"You're a man who's stolen a horse, who's broken into a church, who's first instinct is to draw first and ask questions later, but you still don't know who you are."

The stranger frowned. "Right now, I'm a hungry man who's out of work, out of money, with no way to get out of a town that has no work for a stranger. I'm a man with no past, and, unless I get myself out of this hole, a man with no future. I'm nothing and nobody."

"I see. Do you have a name?"

The stranger sighed. "I don't know it."

"Of course not."

The stranger felt his temper fray and struggled to remain cordial. "I don't remember anything before I was rescued. The couple who nursed me called me Jesse James, because they didn't know how else to call me in for lunch, but, truth be told, I'm not particularly fond of being called by an outlaw's name. Too many dirty looks, you know."

"I see," the preacher said again. 

"Well, what about you? Do you have a name?"

The preacher smiled tightly. "I'm Reverend Cady."

"Nice to meet you, Reverend." The stranger held his hand out to shake. Reverend Cady hesitated just a moment, but he took the stranger's hand in both of his and clasped it warmly. "I guess you can call me the thief on the left... or is it the right? No, wait, I don't want to be remembered as a thief. Say, maybe you can call me Job!"

The reverend shook his head, but he smiled broadly. "Your irreverence will get us both stricken down where we stand, friend."

"Maybe you should call me Lazarus," the stranger said softly. "Seeing as how I'm about to beg you for something to eat." When the reverend didn't answer, the stranger got slowly to his feet. "Okay."

"If I fed every tramp that passed through this town, I'd be up to my ears in strays," the reverend said. 

The stranger stared at him. There was something in those words, something that made his heart ache. But he couldn't place the feeling with any precision, except that it belong to a memory locked away in the fog of his past.

"Besides that," the reverend continued, "I don't know how I feel about feeding a man who'd as soon kill me as not - and don't deny it, friend. The first thing you did was try to draw a gun you don't have."

Angry, the stranger yanked his shirt up, revealing the raised, angry scars he bore from the old woman's stitchery. He reveled in the satisfaction of seeing the good Reverend Cady recoil in horror. "When I woke up, an old man was arguing with his wife over my dying body about whether or not to fix this," he growled. "I was left to die, and dragged in by _dogs!_ I've been accused of stage robberies, of taking people's jewels, of framing saloon girls, and I've been tossed in jail for it, and threatened with hard labor for things I never did! I'm tired, I'm hungry, I've got no way to catch game or defend myself against whatever thieving tramps y'all seem to think are outside your city limits! I'm a stranger in a strange place, and you touched me while I was sleeping - damn straight I tried to draw on you! You think I'd have done such a thing if I wasn't in desperate need?"

"If I give you a loaf of bread, will that satisfy you?"

"One loaf?"

"Aha," Cady said. "So you want to come to me and be fed indefinitely? How long until you get on your feet? How will you ever-"

"I need a job, Reverend," the stranger said slowly. "I need a job, and a place to sleep, and food to eat, and enough money to get out of Cheyenne. I've asked all around." The stranger looked about. "This is a beautiful church."

"Thank you," Cady said warily.

"It's beautiful, and I bet your wife or kids or something have to come over and dust it every Saturday evening or some such, so that it's all ready for Sunday."

"We come over a few times to clear out the cobwebs," Cady said, still wary.

"Well, would you be willing to hire me on to do that for you? And then you all could have a little extra free time, and you'd be an example of how to deal with strangers who come to town looking for handouts, or whatever you think it is I'm doing wrong."

Cady mulled this over. "I have no extra funds for a caretaker. That's why we've been handling it ourselves. I'm sorry."

The stranger deflated, and fell back to the pew. He turned his head, trying to hide his sudden tears. What now?

"Still... I'm sure there must be someone in town who could use a strong fellow like you," Cady went on. "I... I can see if my wife can fix you a plate at dinnertime. And there's a store room in the back, behind the altar, where the broom and mop and such things are kept. There's a pallet back there. My daughters sometime nap there during the late services. I suppose you could use it. But you'd have to do a good job of keeping the place tidy. This wouldn't be charity. I'd expect you to work well."

"For one hot meal and a pillow?"

Cady stiffened. "It wouldn't take you long to clean this little room up. You could continue your job search in the meantime. And you wouldn't have to starve."

Unappealing as the offer was, he had to admit that it was the best he'd had since getting off the stage. Hell, it was the best offer he'd had since leaving the Ward's. And maybe taking a job for no pay for the Reverend Cady might soften some of those hearts in the middle of town. Reluctantly, he got to his feet. "I'd like to start now, then, if I can."

Cady nodded shortly. "I'll show you the storage room. And I'll have one of the girls bring you something to tide you over until dinnertime. Follow me."


	22. Motion for Trial

Slim's stomach roiled as he listened to Prescott lay out his case for the judge. He'd been to plenty of court hearings in his day, mostly as witness, sometimes as lawman, and even once or twice as plaintiff. There was usually an arrest, and then a district judge came to town to listen to the sheriff (or, if he was available, the prosecuting lawyer) run through the evidence, and then the judge either set a date, or dismissed the whole mess without any fuss. He'd never heard of any prosecutor presenting an opening argument for a pre-trial hearing as if there were a jury present.

But Prescott stood in front of the judge, and weaved a tale of intrigue and madness worthy of Shakespeare himself. "This mad man, this _thief_ , on the hunt for cash and precious metal and whatever else he can find, is a cold killer. I intend to show the court evidence that Mr. Sherman is a cold, calculating killer, a killer who snuffed out a poor, defenseless little girl, a girl he chased down after first murdering her betrothed in a hold-up gone horribly awry."

When Prescott finished, Judge Taylor looked expectantly at Don Times three. The fool shook his head slightly, waiving his right to refute the insane opening the prosecution laid out. Slim wished desperately he'd requested a different lawyer. Maybe it wasn't too late to ask. After all, he almost certainly would have to go before a jury.

Prescott called his first witness, and Slim realized with a start that the prosecutor intended to run this preliminary trial like it was the real thing. Maybe he hoped to wear Slim down, to make him beg for swift mercy and a quick death. 

Emmett Cox shuffled to the witness stand as if it were he facing the gallows, rather than sending someone else to hang. The old man slumped down in the witness chair and could barely lift his hand to swear out his testimony. Prescott was gentle when he spoke. "I'm going to ask you some very detailed questions today, Mr. Cox, in the hopes that I won't have to ask you to return for the actual trial, should we progress past this stage. The questions I'm going to ask you might be distressing, sir, but the more accurate and detailed your answers are, the easier it will be for us to establish the events that lead to this terrible tragedy, and easier it will be to find other ways to present evidence without putting you through this ordeal a second time. Do you understand, Mr. Cox?" Emmett nodded, and the real nightmare began.

Emmett could hardly speak, but Prescott pressed him to speak up, with gentle encouragement. Though it was like pulling teeth, Prescott managed to get the old fool to tell the same ugly, twisted story the damned girl had told in the minutes before she died. 

Slim nudged Donaldson. "He's repeating what the girl told us on the mountain. He can't do that, can he?"

Don Times Three shrugged. "This isn't the jury trial, Sherman. Hearsay is admissible at this stage."

"But it's a lie!"

Donaldson raised an eyebrow as the judge banged his gavel. "Is there a problem, Mr. Donaldson?"

"Ah, no. My client is simply... surprised. He doesn't seem particularly familiar with the litigation process, Your Honor."

"Mr. Sherman, you will keep quiet, or I will hold you in contempt."

Slim could feel his face burn, but he slunk down in his seat and nodded. "Yes, sir," he said quietly. 

Emmett resumed his damning testimony, answering leading questions about Slim's appearance on the side of the hill, and was painted as a ruthless, heartless man who'd even go so far as to shoot down a good horse - an assertion that dealt as sharp a blow as a brass knuckled fist to the gut. Dawn was a damned fine mare, and Slim was nearly as torn up over her loss as he was for Jess.

He blinked tears from his eyes, and caught Donaldson watching him oddly. "She was a good horse. Busted a leg on that goddamned mountain," he whispered hoarsely.

Donaldson cocked his head. "Try not to take this personally, Sherman. Prescott is angry because the judge threw out a case last week. He's sticking it to you because he thinks he has something to prove."

Slim turned slowly to Donaldson. "I have something to prove, too," he hissed. "And I will take this personally. You know what? I did kill that girl. I did. But it wasn't murder. It was justified! And yes, it was personal, but everything that old fool is repeating from her mouth? They're dirty twisted lies that she took from my own life."

"You can't prove that," Donaldson said calmly.

Slim ground his teeth and turned away from his idiot lawyer. Useless bastard. How could he prove any damned thing? Everyone who knew the truth was dead. 

Emmett was excused from the witness stand, and one of the bailiffs helped the old man from the chair. As he stepped across Slim's line of sight, the bailiff's badge caught a ray of bright sunlight that streamed in through the open windows. Slim stared at it, and wondered.

"If... If I told you that a lawman from my home town could vouch for me, do you think... would it help?"

"Almost certainly," Donaldson said. "Why? Are you particularly familiar with the law back home?"

Slim smiled tightly. He could hear the sarcasm laced in Donaldson's words. But he wouldn't let himself be baited. Donaldson was a fool, but he knew the law, and in his own way, he seemed interested in helping Slim. So he nodded and said, "I sure am. I've been deputized a few times. In fact, I'd tried to get deputized for this whole mess, but the sheriff was out of town, dealing with another legal mess, and the man he'd left in charge didn't have the authority to deputize me."

Donaldson's smirk shifted a little. "Maybe I should have let you tell me your story, if only to satisfy my curiosity."

"You get Mort Cory, the Sheriff of Laramie, and you'll get your curiosity satisfied, friend. And you just might save an innocent man."

Donaldson mulled this over while Prescott gave another longwinded introduction to his next witness. When the prosecutor took a breath, Donaldson got to his feet. "Your honor, may I approach the bench?"

"Now?" Judge Taylor's face was absolutely incredulous, and Prescott looked like he he wanted to turn Donaldson to ash with just the heat of his glare.

"Your honor, a man's life is at stake, and the defense has just received word of possible refuting evidence that might save my client's neck."

Taylor sighed. "Alright, Mr. Donaldson." Slim watched as the two lawyers went up to the judge. Prescott clearly wasn't happy with Donaldson's request, but the judge nodded, and soon a bailiff went dashing out of the courtroom like a bat out of hell. The judge banged his gavel. "Fifteen minute recess," he said, before rubbing his temples with both hands. Slim could relate. His head was pounding, too.

* * *

In the fifteen minutes it took the bailiff to scurry off with his task, and return with an acknowledgment of receipt, Slim watched the seats in the back fill up nicely. So much activity for a preliminary hearing - he hated to think what kind of circus the courthouse would be if he made it to a jury trial. 

He tried not to be too disappointed when the bailiff didn't return with a definitive answer - after all, fifteen minutes was just barely time to get the telegraph off, and to get someone to run the message to the sheriff's office, and _that_ assumed Mort was even at his desk. For all Slim knew, the man could have been out chasing cattle rustlers halfway across the mail trail into Cheyenne. But he knew he wouldn't be able to settle down until he knew for sure that Sheriff Cory was on his way.

When Chris Coleman took the witness stand, the last fragile bits of Slim's hope shattered. Where Emmett had been timid and mournful, Chris was a blustering whirlwind of rage. 

Chris gave a damning testimony. Prescott's questions weren't particularly probing, but Chris was more than happy to lay waste to Slim's character. According to the witness, he was cold, calculating, deceitful, surly, and he was very handy with a gun. 

Donaldson seemed nearly as antsy as Slim felt. He kept twisting and turning in his seat, so much so that the spectators directly behind Slim began to comment. Finally, Judge Taylor interrupted Chris' ravings. "Is there some other problem, Mr. Donaldson?"

"I was simply waiting for word on my witness, your honor." Donaldson didn't flinch or hesitate. Slim was impressed.

"Well, Mr. Donaldson, since I can see the back of the courtroom better than you can from our current positions, allow me to take this moment to assure you that I will indeed let you know if and when there is a response to your telegram. For now, however, would you please stop stirring up a hornet's nest in my court?"

Don Times Three slunk down in his seat, and stared at his folded hands while Chris frothed on the stand. Slim resisted the urge to look back as well, instead keeping his eyes on the judge's face. At first, he was watching for signs of word from Mort, but soon he was lost in another worry - it seemed to him that Judge Taylor was becoming increasingly absorbed in Chris Coleman's story. The last thing Slim needed was to lose the judge's sympathy. He was the only spot of sanity in the dirty craziness of this town at the bottom of the mountains. 

This time, when the judge offered Donaldson a chance to cross examine, he took it. Slim was surprised - when Donaldson bothered to get up off his keister and do his job, he was no slouch. Where'd they find the girl? How'd they know she was telling the truth about any of her magical story? Why hadn't they found her young man's body? 

The cross backfired, though. They believed her story because she was found out cold on a back road between Wyoming and Colorado, because they didn't see how she could have faked her injuries, because Slim had watched her with a vengeful eye the moment he saw her lying on Emmett's couch, and because Slim himself had been found not on the road, but on the side of Emmett's mountain, in the middle of killing his own horse.

Donaldson returned to his seat, shaken. "I don't know how you expect to get out of this one."

Slim didn't know that either, or even if he should try. But at least Mort would know what happened to him if things didn't work out. It was a cold comfort.

To his surprise, the judge called for another recess. "I'm sure the prosecution has another plethora of goodies with which to bombard the court, but to be quite frank, it's getting close to dinner time, and I don't think I could take another minute of this whole sordid mess. This court is in recess until Wednesday, the day after tomorrow, at 11:30 A.M. Mr. Donaldson, this would be a good time to gather any refuting evidence you'd like to submit to this hearing. Otherwise, it'll have to be held over for trial."

Slim's heart began to race, and he recoiled from the approaching deputies. He forced himself to stay still. "Sounds like the judge is giving up on me."

Donaldson shrugged. "After today, can you blame him?"

"He's the judge! Hell yes, I can blame him!" Slim struggled to his feet while the deputies worked on preparing him to shuffle back to his holding cell. "He's supposed to be impartial!"

"And he was," Donaldson said. "Listen. I'm going to have dinner, and then we can discuss the rest in a couple of hours."

But Slim was tired of discussing things with Donald Donatello Donaldson. Every discussion always led to the same place - Slim behind bars, counting down the last hours of his life. All he wanted now was to see Mort Cory, and to tell him his side of things. He wanted to get Jess clear. He could die, then, even with his name sullied. Andy would understand.


	23. No Escaping Destiny

It didn't take long for the stranger to develop a routine: dust the church at sunup, spend the day in town asking for odd jobs, return to the church for a second wipe down, eat dinner, sleep. It was similar to life with the Wards, but no one expected the stranger to clean the Cady house from top to bottom, and instead of a pack of mangy dogs and rawboned horses, there were three friendly children underfoot. With routine came comfort. After just a day with the children, the stranger realized he was almost comfortable with the idea of settling in with the Cadys forever, if they'd have him.

He'd grown so comfortable with the preacher's family, and they with him, that he'd taken to spending more time checking for minor (mostly unnecessary) repairs at the church and helping Mrs. Cady corral the kids than he did looking for work that no one was willing to offer. The smallest child, a little yellow headed, buck toothed boy, tugged at the stranger's heartstrings so, and he found he was willing stay unarmed and just underfed for the chance to listen to the little boy's bubbling laughter. 

If not for the dreams, he might have asked the Cadys to let him stay on forever. He could plant a garden, a nice big one, and between that and rabbit hunting, there'd be enough food for him to get by just fine, and he'd be available for any small tasks they needed. He could be helpful with the shopping, carrying parcels for Mrs. Cady and the girls, and he could teach the boy how to hunt - just for food, not for the sake of being a gunslinging saddle tramp. He knew he could be indispensable to the Cadys, if he really wanted to be. But come nightfall, the shadowworld with the tall man like the sun would call him, using a name the stranger could never hear. _Come home,_ the man said. _Come back home._

He longed for a drink to dampen the memory, but Reverend Cady believed the only good use for anything stronger than a cup of coffee was medicinal. Even the wildberry wine Mrs. Cady siphoned off into tiny glass bottles was kept under lock and key in the back of the house, and only doled out as part of her care packages she made special for the sickly shut-ins. She'd caught the stranger watching her bottle the sweet wine, and smiled gently, almost pityingly at him. "This won't bring your memory back any sooner, friend. And if you aim to use it to push away memories you'd as soon forget, then you'll never heal." She did give him a bowl of crushed, unfermented berries for his trouble though, all run through with day old cream from town, like he was a child. He didn't know whether to hate the gentle woman for her patronizing, or bless her for at least acknowledging the ghosts he thought no one else saw haunting him. 

After that one offer of berries and cream, the stranger's escape to the town square was as much from Mrs. Cady's tender gaze as the dreams that plagued him. He sometimes wished he could bring himself to beg one of the children for a couple of coins, for just one drink, but he'd rather be labeled a thief a thousand times over than be reduced to begging from sweet faced babies. Instead, he comforted himself by sitting on the edge of the boardwalk, and watching the men come and go from the big saloon across from the stage stop. Sometimes, he watched the stage as well. At first, he watched because he was afraid of the possibility of some lawman deciding they weren't quite done with him after all. After he began to feel comfortable with the Cady family, he watched because he could live vicariously through the people stepping on and off the coach. 

The women and their rustling skirts and the giant boxes they couldn't do without made for good entertainment. He sometimes would hear local cowpokes mumble about how he had the best seat in the house, and he laughed with them. But the ladies didn't stir the kind of excitement in his belly that the dusty boys from the range were surely feeling. They were just pretty colors. They held no more enticement for the stranger than a patch of wildflowers, or the little glass balls of swirling color inside the Cady boy's marble jar. Nice to look at, but best handled by someone who'd really appreciate them.

What did sometimes get his heart pounding was the cowboys themselves. Dusty, sweaty, smelling of horse and cow and man, chins covered in days old growth, they were the kind of men that made those same ladies go scurrying down to the hotel like their skirts were on fire. But the stranger found himself wanting to lean in close and breathe it all in. Maybe it meant something. Maybe he was a cowboy himself. He certainly had a way with horses, after all. 

Maybe he'd find the man he dreamed of in the group of dirty, foul mouthed, foul minded cowpokes that drifted through town.

He didn't really expect to find his mystery man conveniently wandering the streets of Cheyenne. How could he? There was no face, nothing solid to identify him with. There was just the feeling of being home, a feeling of belonging. A feeling that dissipated each morning, along with all the other details of his dream. And he knew better than too look to hard at these men with that kind of longing. This wasn't the open range, not a wide expanse of land and sky, with only your horse and cattle for company, where the nearest human contact was clear across the other side of your world, and no one else would happen upon you for weeks. And even then, the stranger wouldn't take for granted that another lonely range hand would appreciate that kind of appreciation.

So the stranger kept his eyes firmly off the ragtag men that cheered him on, and settled for the tame entertainment of watching the people on the early morning stage. He thought about what it might be like to get all duded up to take the stage on out of town, with money in his pocket, and a sleek, clean chin, freshly shorn of all his salt speckled whiskers. Maybe he'd chat with one of those silly, colorful little ladies while the stage bounced and shuddered over the dusty trail, until he was far from Cheyenne, far from Laramie, far from Buckeye, far from it all.

Sometimes after a few hours of talking to the shopkeepers (and getting gently but firmly shooed away from their storefronts), he'd return to watch the midday coaches come tearing into town. He didn't do it often - he didn't want the law to come fussing at him about vagrancy - but sometimes he couldn't keep smiling through the again friendly rejections, and he couldn't face the long walk back to the church.

He was having one such day when the southbound midday stage pulled up, kicking up traildust all the way. It didn't stop in the usual spot right in front of the ticket booth, but slid on a couple doors down, closer to the bank. The man riding shotgun stood up and held his gun at the ready, like he was expecting trouble. The stranger settled back, not wanting to give the man with the gun any reason to single him out, and froze slightly. The driver hadn't released the reins, hadn't jumped down to help anyone out of the coach, hadn't moved at all. He was twisted slightly in his seat, his brow furrowed in what looked like deep concentration. 

And he was staring right at the stranger.

A southbound stage. Out of Laramie. 

The sands of time kept right on slipping, while he'd been playing nursemaid and caretaker to a fool preacherman. Or maybe the stranger was the fool - maybe he should have spent time trying to make that garden, and kept far away from the stageline.

At any rate, he knew he couldn't stay where he was. He got to his feet, aware that the movement caught the eye of the stage guard, and deliberately turned his back on the stage. He headed north, away from the bank, the staring stage line employees, an old robbery charge that might or might not stick to his back, all of it. The first thing he saw was a saloon, a little bigger than the one he'd sometimes watch with such longing. He'd seen it plenty of times before, but he'd only set foot inside it once. Where the rest of the town seemed pretty friendly like, this one barkeep snapped at the stranger like a wild dog, and sent him out with his tail between his legs. The stranger hesitated, but the soft thud of someone hitting the packed dirt on the street from a height made him just brave enough to head for the door.

The same ornery cuss stood behind the crowded bar, shining a mug with a dirty towel. The stranger ducked his head and pushed his way into the rowdy crowd, hoping that if he just didn't pay the barkeep no mind, he'd be left alone. 

No such luck. "Hey," the barkeep barked. "Ain't no work here!"

"Just want to get out of the sun for a spell," the stranger muttered, and tried to head for the back.

"I ain't babysittin' nobody that ain't payin'!"

The stranger hunkered down further, and made his way towards the handful of empty tables in the very back. He didn't want to stay long. If he could just stay out of sight of the driver, long enough for the stage to leave, he could get away. Maybe see if one of the cowboys that passed through town would give him a hand, at least long enough to get some miles between himself and Cheyenne. 

He kept his head down, and picked at the skin peeling around his fingernails. They were getting thin and brittle - sort of like he was, he supposed. He snorted. It wasn't funny, but it was. Maybe he could just keep peeling until there wasn't nothing left to peel anymore. Then he could finally rest.

"Here you go. Need anything else?"

The stranger froze. A tall, cold mug of beer sat on the table in front of him, and a tired looking saloon girl stood next to him, looking for all the world like the last thing she wanted to do was take an order from him. He shook his head, and pushed at the mug. "I... I can't pay for that. But don't make me go, at least tell me when the-"

The saloon girl snorted. "We know you ain't got no money, sugar." 

"Well, then, I don't understand."

The woman rolled her eyes and pointed. "That fella over there bought it." The stranger followed the line of her finger, to an older man standing a little separate from the crowd. "You want anything else, or not?"

"No, ma'am," the stranger said. His heart began to pound, hard. The man across the room was staring at him, just as hard as the stage driver had been. Maybe it was too late to make his escape. His mouth went dry as the girl spun on her heel and swished away from him, back into the thick of the crowd, leaving him alone and cornered.

He glanced at his drink again, as someone in the room called out, "Jess Harper!" The stranger jumped a little, and the crowd hushed a bit, and turned to stare at the man who'd bought the stranger his drink. "Jess Harper," the new man said again, breathlessly this time.

The stranger scanned the crowd, wondering if maybe someone was going to answer the man, but no one did. The man came slowly to the stranger's table, eyes wide as saucers. "Jess Harper," he said a third time, as he put his hand on the back of the chair across from the stranger. "Jess...? Is it... is it really you? Joey said he thought he saw you come in here, but... I can't believe it."

The stranger kept his mouth shut, and watched warily while the strange man sat down across from him. A flash of silver caught the stranger's eye as the new man settled in his seat. Under his coat was a badge. Another lawman. 

"Jess... why are you hiding here in Cheyenne, anyway? Why haven't you come home? We miss you!"

The stranger sat, frozen. Who the hell was Jess? And what happened if this man realized he wasn't Jess? Or, what if it was all a test, and the best thing to do was to play along? What if this lawman was on his way through Cheyenne to talk to the law in Buckeye - what if there really _was_ something that could be pinned to his hide?

"Jess?"

The stranger opened his mouth, but he couldn't make any sound come out. All he could seem to do was shake his head haltingly, back and forth, like one of those European string puppets.

"Are you in pain, Jess?"

More head shaking.

"You act like you don't know me, Jess." The man's wide eyed stare was turning melancholy.

"I don't," the stranger finally choked out. "I think you have the wrong man."

"No," the lawman said. "No, I do believe I have the right man. But... you don't know me, Jess...?"

"I don't know you, I don't know any Jess Harper, and as kind as your offer was for the drink, I'm obliged to turn you down, sir." He hated the way his voice shook, but there was nothing for it.

Instead of excusing himself and letting the stranger be, the lawman smiled sadly. "You're thinner," he said. "And you've got lines around your mouth that didn't used to be there, and you've got some sliver in your chin whiskers. But I'd know your voice, anywhere, Jess Harper. I'd know your voice, and the way you flex your fingers when you're uncomfortable, and I know you've got an appetite like a twenty mule team. You look hungry, Jess, let -" 

"I don't know who Jess Harper is," the stranger said again, straining to get the words out of his quickly closing throat. "All I want is to be left in peace! Please."

The lawman put his hands on the table, and smiled widely. "I'm your friend, Jess. We all thought you were dead. You don't know how good it is to see you."

"I don't want to go to jail."

That stopped the overly friendly lawman for a moment. "No one is going to put you in jail, Jess," he said slowly.

"I don't know who Jess Harper is, I say!"

"Yes," the man said, still speaking slowly, as if to a small, stupid child. "Yes, you did say that. You also said you don't know me, and that you don't want to go to jail. I heard you. But, listen to me," he said, slowly pulling his jacket open to reveal the star the stranger had already seen. "I'm the sheriff of Laram-"

The stranger jumped up and reached for an iron he _still_ didn't have, and froze with his hand clutching at his empty hip.

The sheriff's face was just like Mrs. Ward's had been when he'd drawn on her: shock, fear, disappointment. The emotions flashed by, lighting quick, but the stranger caught them. A small part of him was sad to have made the man feel unhappy, but the rest of him screamed run, run, run!

He couldn't make his feet move.

The seconds ticked by, and finally, a new expression settled on the sheriff's face. Understanding. "Sit down, son. Everything's alright." He raised his hands, slow, palms open. "I told you, I'm your - I'm _Jess Harper's_ friend. If I seem pushy, it's because the last I heard, Jess Harper died trying to stop a robbery, and a witness said his body was dragged away by a pack of dogs.

The stranger blinked. "Dogs?"

"That's right."

The stranger sat down, slowly. "Trying to _stop_ a robbery."

"That's right," the sheriff said again.

"So... no one is hunting for this Jess Harper."

The sheriff hesitated a little too long for the stranger's comfort. "Some folks wanted to hang the robbery on Jess. On his dear friend, Slim Sherman, too. Slim's the one who reported Jess' death. But now Slim's in jail for apparently killing the person he claims to be the real thief. Only, now he's being held responsible for the whole thing start to finish, and it's one hell of a mess."

None of that meant a thing to the stranger. "Is this Jess still in trouble, then?"

The sheriff smiled a little. "Not with me, and I'm the law in Laramie."

The stranger could feel the trap closing around him. "And you think I'm Jess."

"You don't?"

"I don't know who I am."

The sheriff nodded. "I know you don't. I can see that. But I know who you are, and Slim will know you, too. You're Jess Harper, and you're one half of the Sherman ranch, which is both a small but important cow and horse ranch just outside the Laramie city limits, and a relay station for the Overland Stage Line. You're a cantankerous but loving character, and we all miss the absolute hell out of you, boy." The sheriff's voice cracked, just a little.

The stranger looked hard at the sheriff, whose eyes were filling with unshed tears. It made him uncomfortable, to watch this stranger cry for him so easily. He didn't know what to do with so much sympathy and affection so freely given. The last time he'd trusted someone who offered him such kindness, he found himself locked away for her crimes. How did he know he could trust this man any better?

The sheriff wiped unashamedly at his eyes. "Come with me, Jess. Come with me to help Slim - let him see you! He's lost without you, he always is. And I'll bet you're just as lost without him. You two were so damned... fond of each other. You'll remember him once you see him, I know it. He's a great big oak of a man, six foot four, got to be more than two hundred pounds, all muscle, and a halo of golden hair piled on his head - they don't grow his kind just any old where, Jess."

The stranger found himself sitting up straighter. _Tall, broad, golden halo_. Could it be? But... "What happens if he doesn't know me? If he's not as sure of my identity as you are?"

The sheriff frowned a little. "He will be... but if he says you aren't Jess, then... I suppose I can buy you a ticket back here?"

"East," the stranger said. "Not here. I want to get out of here. I want to leave the west, and put this nightmare behind me."

The sheriff looked dubious, but he said, "Well, alright."

Too easy. There was definitely a trap in the works. "So... where is this Slim?"

"In Buckeye, Colorado."

The stranger jumped up again. "I'm not going back there! Forget it!"

The sheriff narrowed his eyes. "Going back... were you in Buckeye?"

"I tell you, I'm not going back there! They tried to frame me! They set me up, they wanted to lock me away for something I didn't do!"

Again, the sheriff's words were slow. "I can understand why you wouldn't want to go back there. But Slim Sherman has been accused of killing a woman, and a man she was traveling with. Right now, he thinks he has nothing to lose. If you're Jess -"

"If I'm Jess Harper, that won't matter to the Buckeye law, they'll just find another reason to lock me away the minute they see me, and this time they'll throw away the key!"

The sheriff sighed. "Okay. What did they accuse you of?"

The stranger struggled to calm himself. "Theft."

"And for that they wanted to lock you up for a long time."

"Yes," the stranger growled.

"What kind of evidence did they have?"

"I walked unknowingly into a room full of stolen goods."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"And that's why you want to go east, isn't it?"

The stranger looked away. "Easy to see why they made you sheriff. You're smart."

The sheriff ignored his dig. "I can see why you want to run. I would too, especially if I didn't know who my friends were, or what kind of help I had access to.

"These people who locked you away, unjustly it sounds like to me, are holding a good friend of mine on the suspicion of murder. If these people are willing to lock you up, and throw away the key, just because you happened to be standing near the evidence, what do you think they're going to do to my friend? My friend, who has two eyewitnesses to testify against him, my friend whose story to his defense lawyer matches the story he told my pea-brained deputy before heading out to clear your name - and don't you try to tell me you aren't Jess Harper. You're a quick draw, and Jess Harper had the fastest hand in Laramie. You've got a little scar on your chin. That came from a particularly rowdy Fourth of July celebration, when you got caught in a barroom brawl and went sailing through a window. You have another, longer scar on your left arm, where you sliced yourself up something fierce in some fight in the city of Ironwood. And there's an old bullet hole in your upper left chest, from chasing a pack of wild gunmen who were determined to try a jailbreak on a paddy wagon. You love strawberries, but they make you break out in a rash if you eat too many of them at once, and you can't stand the smell of cooked broccoli. I know _exactly_ who you are, Jess."

The stranger's knees gave out, and he dropped dizzily into his seat. Though he had no idea how he'd gotten them, the list of scars was completely accurate, even to the one the man couldn't see on his chest. He certainly didn't like Mrs. Cady's attempt to make him eat the mushy, stinking vegetable that she apparently thought the sun and moon rose and set on. He hadn't had a chance to settle in for a good bunch of strawberries, but he found himself idly scratching at a phantom itchy patch on his arm. The sheriff smiled indulgently at the action, and the stranger growled and yanked his hand down like he'd touched hot iron.

The sheriff just smiled harder. "I'm Mort Cory, Jess. And Slim needs you."

The names meant nothing to the stranger. Mort, Slim, Jess. Just letters strung together. But, apparently, Mort knew him, and the man Mort was going to save sounded an awful lot like the man haunting the stranger's dreams night after night. And this man, this figment of his imagination, had gone out and gotten himself well and truly tangled in that very real hellhole of Buckeye.

The stranger sighed, and took one long pull from his no longer cold beer. Then he got to his feet, and offered the sheriff his hand. "Okay, Sheriff. Okay."


	24. Discovery

If he'd had his way, the stranger would have bought a couple of horses and gone tearing into Colorado the minute they stepped out of the saloon, guns blazing, until they'd broken this Sherman fella out of his predicament. But Sheriff Mort Cory had other ideas - apparently, Jess Harper needed to get duded up, so as to be respectable in the eyes of the law. 

So their travel was delayed by a trip to the tailor, the habadasher, and the barber, all of whom were more than a little surprised to see a small town sheriff toss so much coin down for their amiably demanding drifter. The stranger was surprised, too - there was absolutely no way he could pay Sheriff Cory back for any of this fuss, most of which he found foolish.

"Nonsense, Jess," was Cory's answer, as he ushered the stranger to the public bathhouse at the far end of the street. "I know you don't believe me, because you never believe anyone when they tell you this, but you'll feel much better after a good hot bath. I'll be back with your new clothes - they're going to have to burn these rags you've been wearing. And then you're going back to the barbershop when you're all finished here - maybe he can get at that robin's nest you call hair."

The stranger tugged self-consciously at his hat, and watched the sheriff dispense more cash he'd have to repay to a grinning townie. The man smirked at Cory and bid him good day, before turning his beady little eyes to the stranger. "Well, friend, it looks like you've finally convinced some poor fool to take you in. The good Lord has seen fit to bless you today!"

The stranger wrinkled his nose at the smirking attendant's blasphemy, not so much for his own belief, but out of respect for the only person in Cheyenne who'd given him half a thought. But he held his tongue and allowed the attendant to usher him into the inner sanctum of the bathhouse.

There were a few men already in the changing room. The stranger vaguely recognized all of them, and he knew from their gap mouth stares that they recognized him. They were all in various states of undress, some damp and steamy from the water, some still dry and dusty around the edges. They were all cleaner, and likely plumper than the stranger was. Shyness blanketed him, and surprised and shamed him. He looked helplessly at the attendant, who just chuckled and pointed to a shelf. "You can put your things there - the stuff you want to keep, that is. The stuff you don't want, just leave it here in the corner, I suppose. I'll have someone take care of it. Your, uh, friend there paid for the hot bath, so take the door on the left, back in the corner there. The towels are over there, soap's in the box, and we got a full house today, so you're limited to fifteen minutes in the soaking room. Enjoy!" 

The stranger watched the door swing shut behind the jolly attendant, and returned his attention to the dressing room. He'd wished he'd stayed at the church, instead of dilly dallying in town, and getting caught up in somebody else's mess. New clothes, new haircut - and for what? To be a laughing stock in a town where he was already ridiculed, before being locked away for good in a town that had no mercy or soul? 

He shut his eyes and began to peel out of his clothing. There was nothing for it. The service was paid for, and, despite the sheriff's words, the stranger thought a good hot soak sounded like heaven. If he had to share the space with a bunch of clucking old biddies disguised as men, then that's what he had to do. Couldn't be any worse than mucking out stalls, or scrubbing down a church for some scraps like a dog. 

The initial snickering was easy to ignore. It was the hush that fell over the room as he disrobed that made him nervous. He opened his eyes, and saw that the men were staring at him. He glanced down at himself, and tried to see his body through unaccustomed eyes. He was rail thin, which he knew they'd expect. He was also scarred, bullet holes and war wounds and knife slashes all over his skin. His body told a story none of the townies had likely ever encountered before - he was a fighter, and even half starved, defenseless, and penniless, he was still standing. The stranger stood a little taller, kicked off the rest of his clothing, and walked proudly through the door on the other side of the dressing room. He knew they were watching the pull of his muscles, the twist of sinew, and he knew they were reassessing him. 

He was surprised to find he didn't particularly care what they thought anymore.

The steam from the bath room hit him full in the face, like walking into an invisible wall. He choked a little at first on the hot, moist air, and his eyes stung and watered. As he waited for his eyes to clear, he looked around the small hot, steamy room. There were two large wooden tubs in the middle of the floor, surrounded by heavy woven rugs. A trio of large kettles on the boil towards the back of the room looked to be the source of the intense wet heat that filled the space. A young boy who looked like he ought to be in a school house instead of a bath house sat next to the kettles, and played with a ball in a cup toy. The tub on the right had a man sunk down in slightly sudsy water, so only the very top of his head showed over the lip of the tub. The left hand tub was empty. 

The stranger approached the empty tub, and found that it wasn't entirely empty. It was half full of slightly murky water, probably soap scum and someone else's trail dust. He touched the water. It was surprisingly cold. He looked up at the boy, who was still preoccupied with his toy, but his voice wouldn't work. The steam had choked away most of his newfound bravado, and the chill of the bath had frozen what little was left. He gritted his teeth and put one foot down in the tepid water. 

The man in the other tub stirred at the sound of the stranger's splashing. "Hold on there, friend. That water's been sitting there a spell. Might as well get what you paid for. Joey, you've got a customer." 

The stranger paused at the familiar voice, and looked at the other bather carefully. The stranger had never seen him without his glasses, but the sandy hair and the long limbs folded into the tub gave the man away. "Reverend?"

"One and the same," Reverend Cady said. 

The stranger skittered out of the way of the manchild struggling towards him with giant bucket of scalding water. "Thanks," he muttered to the boy, before returning his attention to the other customer. "You... you come here, Reverend?"

"Not often. But I do get dirty, and my wife has enough work as it is, especially with her babysitting a grown man."

The stranger stiffened, but he held his tongue. He tested the water again. It was a bit too hot, but he wanted to be over and done with this task. Suddenly, the idea of being locked away in Buckeye didn't seem quite so bad. At least he'd be paid a tiny wage in jail, and he could probably do some whittling or knitting during his down time to bring in extra cash. And he'd be fed twice a day, like a civilized prisoner, instead of ridiculed for his misfortune.

He grit his teeth and sank down in to the hot, hot water. He scrubbed quickly, splashing water every which way, trying to get through the bath as fast as he could before his skin clean melted off his body. 

"I need more heat, Joey," Cady said. "And what in tarnation is wrong with the man in the other tub? Did you put a spider in the water?"

The stranger stopped splashing. "You don't see too good without your extra eyes, do you, Reverend?"

It took Cady a long moment to answer. "No, friend, I don't. My hearing is alright, though." The reverend sighed. "Interesting choice you've made."

"What's that?"

"A bath. I'd have thought the first purchase you'd make would be a drink, or a weapon."

The stranger got to his feet. He was clean enough. "It wasn't my first purchase. The first purchase was a ticket on the stage. I wouldn't let him get me one thing else, unless he promised to get me the hell out of this miserly, sanctimonious, hard hearted town."

Cady shrugged. "I thought that title belonged to Buckeye."

The stranger shuddered. "No. They're murderous and unbelieving. But they aren't miserly. I've give 'em that."

There was a knock at the door, and the attendant stuck his head in. "Your sheriff friend is here," the clerk said. "You need any more soap, Reverend?"

"I'm fine," Cady said.

The stranger looked back at him. "You're not fine. You just know that no amount of scrubbing will ever get you clean. You're no man of God."

Cady peered at him with squinty eyes. "You had a roof over your head, and good food to eat. You have no call to question the level or intent of my charity. The world doesn't owe you a living."

"I never said it did, Reverend." The stranger spat the title out, like a mouthful of snake venom. "But you're the one who let slip what you really think of me, and that's where the question of your level of charity comes from. But don't you worry. Your wife won't be babysitting me again. I'll either be imprisoned, or killed, or installed in some town where my benefactor thinks I'll fill a big pair of shoes. But my shadow won't be darkening your door. Your prayers have been answered." The stranger turned his back on Cady, and walked through the door with his head held high.

The changing room felt almost icy after the intense heat of the bathing room. The two men shucking their clothes kept their eyes lowered, as if there was nothing more interesting in the world than pulling off dusty boots and folding up sunbleached jeans. The attendant cleared his throat, and pointed to a neatly folded pile of clothing away from his other customers. "Your clothes been delivered. Bath okay?"

"Nothing to be done about it if it wasn't. Unless you plan on giving the sheriff a refund of some kind."

The attendant grunted and hustled back to the front of the washhouse. The stranger pulled on his new clothes, and checked his reflection. He was startled by the man who looked back at him. It wasn't the haunted scarecrow that he'd grown to accept as his face. There was another man looking back at him - still gaunt, still haunted, certainly, but there was more to him. A fire, a determination. A will to see his way through whatever awful tragedy life struck him with next. He tugged at his jacket and set his jaw, and went out to the front room where Sheriff Cory waited with a frown on his face.

"Bad news, Jess. Just got word on the wire that the mid-morning stage never made it to Laramie, and it's questionable if it even made it to the Sherman Relay."

"Does that mean we aren't going to Buckeye?"

Cory laughed a little. "Not on your life, friend. I didn't come all the way out here just to let Slim Sherman hang by the neck. It just means we either have to wait for the next stage, which might come too late, depending on how the pre-trial is going, or I'll have to wire for more cash, to cover the purchase of a couple of horses here in town. How's your riding?"

"It's fine, I suppose, but I'm not too comfortable riding anywhere without a sidearm."

"No, I don't suppose you are," the sheriff said thoughtfully. "Well, that's an expense I can't cover, even without the horses. I suppose that means we're just going to have to wait for the stage. It's supposed to arrive in a few hours, and if all goes well, we should be in Buckeye before supper. But I worry... we might be just in time to see Slim locked away for a trial we can't possibly influence."

The stranger cringed at the thought of riding into Buckeye for nothing. "Maybe... maybe you should just get a horse, ride on without me. I can... I can catch the stage, and meet you there, if they still need me."

Cory looked at him sadly. "Jess... I know you're having a hard time believing me, but I wouldn't be a friend to you if I let you out of my sight now. If you were to suddenly start remembering things, you'd never forgive yourself - even if everything turns out alright, you'd have one hell of a time living with the idea that you were too much of a coward to come to Slim's aid." Cory squeezed the stranger's shoulder gently. "I promise that as long as there's breath left in my body, the tomfoolery that passes for law in Buckeye will have to come through me to get to you, boy."

* * *

Donaldson was already smiling when Slim entered the court room. Slim had a small smile of his own - the day off had done both him and his case a world of good. He even thought he might trust Donaldson to help him if they didn't get the case thrown out. Donaldson had finally given Slim the ear he should have before any of this started, and Slim had finally thrown off his deathwish, and began to allow hope to bloom within, the hope of perhaps seeing home again one day - maybe even one day soon. 

His hope shriveled and crumbled as the trial resumed. There was no sign of Sheriff Cory yet. There was, however, on a table near the empty jury box, the strong box Hope had been rifling through in the root cellar carved into the side of the mountain. There was also a very smug, very confident Prescott, looking for all the world like the cat who'd caught the canary.

The reason behind Prescott's smugness soon became crystal clear. He entered the strong box into evidence, and began to weave a twisted tale that was all too familiar to Slim: unsolved stage line robberies, gunned down men, wild goose chases across a still very wild frontier. His jaw dropped as he realized what Prescott was getting at - the prosecutor wanted to hang more than just Hope's demise on his neck. He wanted to lay a whole slew of robberies at Slim's feet. 

Slim wasn't the only one who couldn't believe his ears. Judge Taylor banged his gavel in the middle of Prescott's tirade (for that's what it'd devolved into, a ranting, raving tirade), and demanded, "What in the name of all that's holy are you frothing about, man? I remind you, Mr. Prescott, this is a hearing to determine if I am going to allow this town to try the prisoner, not to convince your neighbors sitting in the gallery there that the prisoner is the most horrible man ever to walk the west."

Prescott was undaunted. "Your honor, I do have a point in sharing this long list of criminal activity, and beg the court to please hear me out."

"I've heard more than I care to, Mr. Prescott. Instead of grandstanding, or leading us down a merry rose-hewn path, why don't you simply state in plain language what your grand speech is intended to show? In a single sentence, please."

Prescott smiled. "Of course, your honor. This empty strong box has an identifying marker inside the lid."

Taylor banged his gavel. "That was two sentences, neither of which cover the point, Mr. Prescott."

Prescott cleared his throat. "My witnesses state that they saw Mr. Sherman attack the unnamed victim, after she told them Mr. Sherman had attacked her and her young man once before, and that he seemed to express deep interest in a strong box near the girl. I propose that the motive for both attacks was pure and simple: he's a thief, and he believed himself to be caught by the young couple. The identifying marker in the lid proves that the strong box belonged to the Overland Stage Line. It connects the prisoner to the robberies, and the witnesses connect him to the girl's death."

Silence blanketed the courtroom, thick and heavy. The only sound Slim could hear was the rasping of his own breath. How in the hell had things gotten so twisted? Had those two bumbling fools, Chris and Emmett, teamed up with Mr. Prescott to concoct this story? Was the judge buying it? Would a jury buy it? Slim glanced at Donaldson, to see if the lawyer looked as worried as Slim felt.

Donaldson looked concerned, but he wasn't sweating. He wasn't even fidgeting. Granted, he'd heard Slim's version of events the day before, and already knew that a box existed, that it came from the Overland Stage Line, that it was at the scene (and crux) of the crime. All of Prescott's talk about this box had created quite a stir in the court room, but to Donaldson it might simply be an alternate explanation for the situation at hand.

Slim could only hope that his lawyer's new and fragile faith in his innocence wouldn't be cracked by Prescott's tall tales.

Donaldson pulled out his pocketwatch, scowled, swore, and leaned to whisper in Slim's ear. "The morning stage has already come through. Sheriff Cory should have been on it."

Slim could feel the sands of time scattering out of the broken hourglass of his life. Right now, the only thing between Slim's neck and a rope would be the word of a lawman who couldn't be bothered to keep his appointments. If this thing went to trial, he'd be at the mercy of Buckeye law - and Buckeye had no mercy. 

Taylor, meanwhile, was out of patience with the prosecution. "Mr. Prescott. You're entering a strong box into evidence, because you feel it ties the defendant to a completely different series of crimes, in order to prove that he should be put on trial for murder? Where on earth did you earn your law degree? The Ringling Brothers?"

"Your honor," Prescott said, in a tone reserved for Sunday school teachers explaining things to a beloved but particularly stupid child, "I am attempting to establish motive for the heinous crime that was committed. There is no doubt in my mind that the defendant shall be tried for causing the death of the young girl. What I hope to prove is that the law should show the defendant no mercy, just as Sherman showed absolutely no mercy the thousands of victims who've suffered at his hands."

"I see," Taylor said. "Does the state have any further evidence to present?"

"No, your honor."

"Very well. Mr. Donaldson. Did you wish to refute any of the evidence presented at this hearing, either from the witnesses, or from this exhibit?"

Donaldson looked around the courtroom, before turning back to Slim. He leaned forward to whisper. "I don't usually like to show my hand at this stage of proceedings. But your witness hasn't arrived yet, and, well, I'm all out of stalling tactics."

"Mr. Donaldson," the judge said sharply.

"What do you want to do," Slim asked.

"Put you on the stand. I want the judge to hear your version of things. If we draw it out long enough, we might be able to convince the judge to wait one more day, if we must. It's risky, because it gives the prosecution enough information to lock us down. But I think it's less of a risk than-"

"You will answer when the court addresses you, Mr. Donaldson!"

"I'll do it," Slim said quickly.

With that, Donaldson jumped to his feet. "My apologies, your honor. Yes, I'd like to refute the prosecution's theory."

"Oh goody," Taylor said not quite under his breath. "And just how do you propose to do that?"

"I'd like to call Mr. Sherman to the stand."

Though the courtroom had been quiet all along, the quality of silence seemed to change. Suddenly, Slim had the undivided attention of the entire courtroom. Until that moment, he'd thought himself to be under town's relentless scrutiny. But the breathless hush that settled over the room, and the eyes that pricked his skin from all sides, told a different story. _Now_ he was under their scrutiny.

"Please take the stand, Mr. Sherman," Taylor said. Slim forced himself to his feet, and made them shuffle around the table to the seat next to the judge. Though he'd been on many witness stands, and even stood trial a few times, there was a sickening dreaminess to this courtroom. Probably because he'd actually killed - 

Slim shut his eyes against the thought. _Don't even think it. This is no different than any other time you've pulled the trigger to save the ranch. Make them work for a conviction!_ He opened his eyes, vowed before Man and God to tell the truth, and hoped like hell Donaldson knew what he was doing.

* * *

The midday stage coach barreled down the trail with all the speed the driver could muster, but Sheriff Cory still checked his pocket watch every other second. The stranger watched his benevolent jailer with calm detachment. On the one hand, it was nice to have someone befriend him, nice to have someone clean him up and offer him a decent meal for once, all without having to first spend all day in back breaking labor. On the other hand, he was in no hurry to perform the one favor being asked of him, no hurry at all to return to Buckeye.

All too soon, though, they were in front of the intimidating Buckeye Town Hall. The streets were strangely empty, save for the people disembarking from the stage. The stranger watched Cory leave the stage, and hesitated to follow. "Come on, Jess. It's awful quiet out here. Folks might be inside watching the fireworks. There's a chance that we just might make it." Cory took a step towards the building, but he stood and stared at the coach.

The stranger got down and went stiffly to the sheriff's side. He had to admit, it was easier coming into town than he'd thought it would be. He was grateful that the streets were deserted. It didn't much matter why to him. He walked a step behind Cory as they made their way first to the Mayor's office, and, per some clerical flunkie's instructions, up the stairs to the courtrooms. The step he walked behind turned into two, then four, and then a whole chasm of space as Cory approached a hard looking man that stood in front of the double doors. Cory gestured to his side, then realized that he was gesturing to air. "Jess," he hissed. "Come on!"

The stranger forced himself to close the gap, but he couldn't bring himself to look the guard in the face. He didn't want any trouble. He felt foolish, hiding behind Sheriff Cory like a child behind mama's apron strings. But fear of trigger-happy retribution overrode pride, and he kept his face down.

Either the guard really didn't recognize him, or Sheriff Cory's badge was just shiny enough to blind him to the stranger's face. The door was opened without comment, and the stranger followed the sheriff inside.

The viewing gallery was full. There were a handful of men standing against the back wall on either side of the walkway, and there were children sitting in women's laps who normally wouldn't dare be seen in such a childish position. Cory sighed and convinced the men to shuffle over, so they wouldn't block the doorway. 

A haggard sounding man was on the stand, trying his best to answer that pompous ass of a prosecutor as best he could. The stranger couldn't stifle the shudder that went down his back. He was glad to have gotten away from this sidewinding snake of a man. 

"No wonder you didn't want to come back," Cory growled low. "This is a damned kangaroo court. Listen, you wait here. I'm going to let this Donaldson fella know I'm finally here."

The stranger watched with trepidation as Cory abandoned him in the sea of suspicious townies. He was only half listening to the bombastic fool raging at the front of the room. Most of his attention was to either side of him, as the men nearest him began to mutter and nudge one another. He pulled his hat down over his face, and slid out of his spot, to catch up to Cory, and that useless defense attorney.

The judge sat up straighter as the stranger walked down the aisle, and the prosecutor faltered as he realized he no longer had the room's undivided attention. There were mutters of surprise, and the stranger's face grew warm, but he refused to break his stride, not when he was so close to the one person who'd promised to protect him-

He heard a gasp from the witness stand, and glanced up. He nearly tripped over his own feet. Though the face was weary and creased with lines, there was no doubt in the stranger's mind - this was the man from his dreams.

"Jess...?"

The stranger stood stock still, and watched as the dream-man broke down in tears. His first instinct was to run to the dream-man, to try to comfort him, but the eruption of noise from the gallery and open hostility on the faces of the bailiffs and the prosecutor kept him rooted to the spot. 

"Order!" The judge banged his gavel like an enraged child. "I will have order in this room, or so help me I'll throw this entire town into lockup and fine you all for contempt and interference of justice!" Only the dream-man seemed interested in trying to regain his composure. The rest of the room was a three ring circus, and showed no signs of relenting.

Finally, the judge pointed his gavel at the stranger. "You! And you," he said, swinging the gavel over to Cory. "Approach the bench! Prescott! Donaldson!" 

The two lawyers rushed immediately to do the judge's bidding. "Well, come on, Jess," Cory said, and followed the lawyers sedately. The stranger kept his head down and followed Cory meekly to the bench. He glanced at the witness stand, and was surprised to see the dream-man staring openly at him, one hand raised as if to reach out and touch. 

There was something magnetic about the dream-man's face, and the stranger found himself straying from the bench, to watch this tall, golden man. " _He's a great big oak of a man, six foot four, got to be more than two hundred pounds, all muscle, and a halo of golden hair piled on his head - they don't grow his kind just any old where, Jess._ " The memory of Sheriff Cory's words were swiftly followed by the image that haunted his dreams so often. But instead of a glowing halo that hid the dream-man's face, there was the soft warmth of sunlight, and the same gentle smile that graced this poor, beleaguered man's face. 


	25. Exoneration

"Jess!" The stranger jumped in time with the dream-man, and turned to look at Sheriff Cory. "Judge Taylor asked you a question!"

"Begging your pardon, Judge," the stranger said, and tore himself away from the dream-man with the effort of a twenty-mule-team. "I didn't hear you."

"I said, young man, that I'd been sympathetic to your plight, but it would seem that you've been less than truthful with me. What do you have to say for yourself?"

The stranger looked at Cory in alarm. The sheriff shrugged. "I... I'm afraid I don't understand the question, sir," the stranger said quietly.

The prosecutor, Presley or Preston or some such, jumped right on the stranger. "You claimed to be no thief, but you know this bushwacker-"

"Now hold on," the defense lawyer started.

"Watch your mouth, friend," Cory snapped.

Judge Taylor slammed the gavel down hard enough to make the stranger's teeth rattle. "Prescott, I am going to lock you away and throw away the key! I am addressing John Doe, and no one else!"

The stranger shrank away under the judge's wrath. He noticed the frown on the dream-man's face, and watched him try to catch Cory's eye. 

Taylor beckoned the stranger closer. "Despite my complete disgust with Mr. Prescott's vulgarity, he's done an adequate, if crude, job of explaining my question. It's obvious to everyone here that you are connected with Mr. Sherman, who has been charged with a very serious crime. If you are as blameless as you'd led me to believe, I don't understand why you've returned, or what your connection could possibly be to this man."

The stranger could feel himself shaking inside his new boots, and wondered if everyone else could hear his heart pounding as hard as he could. He forced himself to open his desert dry mouth and speak. "Your honor, I told you the truth, as much as I could, sir. If this man knows who I am, it was before I woke up in the old couple's home. And if that man did something, and it had something to do with me, well, I have no memory of any of it."

"But you went right to him," Taylor said.

The stranger looked back at the dream-man. "I realize that. But what I said is still true."

"Your honor," Sheriff Cory said. "I've come a long way for the express purpose of vouching for Slim Sherman's character, and I can vouch for this man's character as well."

The judge looked at Cory for a long, long time. "You are familiar with John Doe."

Cory smiled grimly. "His name is Jess Harper. He's Slim Sherman's business partner. As such, he's a prominent, and well loved citizen of Laramie."

The stranger raised his eyebrows at that. A business partner? He didn't feel like the kind of man who had any kind of hand in business. His hands were calloused, and reached all too often for a gun whenever he felt threatened. He was a lover of horses and rose with the sun. What in hell kind of business partner was that?

"Your honor," the prosecutor whined. "This simply proves my theory! Theories! Don't you see? The two sets of crimes are connected - here is the take away from the stage line robberies!" Prescott pointed angrily at the box.

"Two sets of crimes?" Cory looked bewildered.

"Yes," the judge said. "The murder of one Jane Doe, which is the matter at hand today, and the string of robberies that plagued the Overland Stage Line in recent months, of which Mr. Doe, or, excuse me, Mr. Harper, was accused while discussing a separate matter just a few days ago. Sheriff Cory, I don't understand how a lawman from a neighboring town can track this man here to Buckeye with the suspicions that he is the fellow wanted for the stage line theft, and then a completely different man is accused of murdering a woman for the same theft, and then the first accused man comes to my court to try to exonerate the second accused man. The coincidence is baffling, to say the least."

"That's because it isn't a coincidence!" The sour faced sheriff of Buckeye appeared from a cluster of men to one side of the courtroom. "This was all a plan! Don't you see? They were clearly in some kind of a heist together, and the girl knew too much! And now they're trying to get each other off!"

The courtroom exploded in pandemonium once again, and Taylor tried uselessly to demand silence. Finally, he got to his feet. "This court is in recess! I want the six of you in my chambers, now!" The stranger looked around helplessly as a group of deputies ushered him, the lawyers, Sherman, and the two sheriffs over to a door behind the judge's bench. 

The door slammed shut, leaving the stranger alone with the six men. He was surprised to find Sherman standing close to him, looking down at him with far more intensity than any business partner should have for another. He was also surprised to find that the scrutiny was the most welcome attention he'd had since awakening in that dirty barn so long ago.

The spell was broken when the judge opened his mouth. "Sherman, did you kill that girl?" When Sherman hesitated, the judge said, "This is off the record. Nothing said in here can be used against you."

Sherman closed his eyes and hung his head. "Yes."

"Slim..." Cory said softly.

The judge was gentle, but firm. "Why did you plead not guilty?"

"Because I didn't _murder_ her. I killed her, yes. But she had a gun -"

"Now, just a minute," Prescott said. "Both witnesses say you overpowered her before she could train that gun on you!"

Sherman looked up, then, right into the stranger's face. "That gun belonged to my best friend. I thought she'd killed him with it. And I knew she intended to kill me with it, too, after robbing those two witnesses blind."

The stranger's hand went absently to the scar on his belly while Sherman spoke. "You're talking about me, aren't you?"

Sherman looked crest fallen. "You really don't know me, Jess?"

The Buckeye sheriff harrumphed. "He's been sticking to that story all along."

"That's because it's true," Cory said. 

"So he says," Prescott said.

"So _I_ say," Cory said quietly but firmly. "This man is Jess Harper, and Jess Harper is no thief or murderer."

"He did steal that horse," the Buckeye sheriff insisted. 

"If he took a horse, he had a reason," Cory said.

"Sure, and Sherman had a reason for killing the girl," Prescott sneered.

"I did have a reason to take the horse," the stranger said over the shouting. "It was a bad one. I was afraid to be called to answer for the stage line theft."

"Maybe you should be made to answer for it," Prescott said.

Sherman slid in front of the stranger, as if to shield him from the prosecutor's words with one large shoulder. "It was _her_ ," Sherman said forcefully. "The girl had the box and _his_ gun."

"Yes!" Prescott turned to the judge. "That just proves what I've been asserting all along - they're in on it together. They're both part of the stage line heist!"

"Now, just a minute," Cory started.

"No!" Sherman's bellow echoed all over the small room, and everyone cowered. "No," he said again, more gently. "Go ahead and hang me for the girl if you must. But Jess is _innocent_. Clearing his name is the only reason I went after her."

"Not revenge?" Judge Taylor asked. "You said you thought he was dead."

Sherman hesitated. "I'll admit it. I did hate her for what she'd done. But more importantly, I hated _myself_. Jess warned me. He warned me, and I didn't listen. And then she was gone. And so was the strong box, and one of the company horses, and... Jess."

The judge frowned. "Company horses...? I'm not sure I follow."

Cory snorted. "That's probably because the prosecution didn't do their homework, before deciding to smear two decent, upstanding men. Jess Harper and Slim Sherman are co-owners of the Sherman Ranch, about 12 miles outside of Laramie. They also are contracted with the Overland Stage Company - the Sherman Relay Station swaps out the horses and handles repairs in the southern Wyoming stretch of the route. These men had no interest in carrying out any holdups against the stage line in the area - they were victims themselves."

"We know that the missive from Laramie was supposed to be an inside job," Prescott said, and stared at the stranger pointedly.

"That's because the idiot deputy I'd left in charge when the crime was committed had filed the charges," Cory said with a sigh. "Slim couldn't produce a body, or the money, and the stage line superintendent was determined to find a fall guy for this mess."

Prescott was undeterred. "Well, how do you explain the robberies stopping when this saddle tramp made his way into Colorado?"

"Because Hope was the one who'd been robbing the lines," Slim said. "She lured people in by pretending to be hurt, gained their trust, and then took off with the money. It's what she did to us, and it's what she was trying to do to those fools on the mountain when..." He trailed off. "Hang the money, hang the stage contract, and hang this town. I just didn't want Jess' memory sullied."

"Well, if we don't get this straightened out, Slim, it's _your_ memory that's going to wind up smeared," Sheriff Cory said. 

"This is all moot," Prescott said. "The simple fact of the matter is, we are here to determine if there is enough evidence to try Mr. Sherman for the murder of the unknown woman. He's as much as admitted to it-"

"No," Sherman said.

"My client did _not_ admit to murder," Donaldson said. "Your honor, he killed accidentally, in self defense."

"You can't prove that," Prescott insisted.

"I don't have to," Donaldson said, and looked for all the world like the cat who'd caught the canary. " _You_ have to prove it wasn't an accident."

"Fine! We'll find a person the same size as the victim, and we'll demonstrate how Sherman could easily have disarmed her." Prescott turned to the Buckeye sheriff. "Get the gun."

A hush fell over the room as the lawman disappeared through the door and returned with a box in his hands. The stranger found himself watching with rapt attention as the box was opened, and a beautiful, sawed-off muzzle, six chambered, pearl handled revolver was pulled from its depths. "Hey..." he said without thinking. "That's mine..."

"Well now, wait a minute," the Buckeye sheriff said. "You don't even know your name. How the heck do you know this is your gun?" There were murmurs of confusion and disbelief from the men of Buckeye, and hopeful looks exchanged from the Laramie pair. 

The stranger ignored it all. "I've seen this gun in my dreams. I have these dreams, different dreams, but the same. I've seen you, too," he said, looking shyly at Sherman. "Anyhow, sometimes, I make a promise to settle down. And when I do, I always put down my gun. It's this gun."

"If we are to believe that," Prescott said, "then that makes _you_ the fiance!"

Heat shot up the sides of the stranger's neck and settled in his ears and cheeks. "Well, I don't know if you could call it that, exactly." He glanced nervously at Sherman, before shrinking down in on himself. "I don't know too many judges that would see kindly to getting us married."

Cory snorted, Sherman groaned, and the other men exchanged confused looks. "I'm not quite sure I follow you," Judge Taylor said.

"Well, I don't mean to make fun, your honor, but I don't know what the heck this bellowing jackass Prescott is braying about. I ain't nobody's fiance. I mean, I might have some kind of fancy business arrangement, and we might be friendly enough that I'd apparently go get myself bushwacked to protect his assets and he'd go off and get himself a murder charge, but if we're gonna get married... well, I ain't sending out no announcements. I'd as soon live to see another day."

Everyone save the judge looked uncomfortable. Taylor just smiled. "I see. So, I take it you're not engaged to the victim, then?"

"Which victim is that?"

"Jane Doe. The woman Mr. Sherman claims to have killed in self defense. The woman who claimed, according to a pair of witnesses, to have been running from Mr. Sherman after he apparently killed her fiance."

"I ain't never trusted no skirt in my life-" the stranger began, but Sheriff Cory cut him off smoothly.

"Your honor," Cory said, "I can guarantee neither of these men has ever lasted more than a fortnight with any woman, and neither of them has even tried in the last five years. To be perfectly honest, I've had my suspicions about their goings on for some time, but this is the first time either of them has ever just come out and said it."

"Hey, wait a minute, Mort," Sherman said. "No one ever came out and said anything about anything - don't go getting these men all riled up about a rumor no one wants to start."

"Thank you, gentlemen!" Prescott clapped his hands gleefully. "It wasn't for money, it was a crime of revenge - but mark my words, your honor, there was a crime here! This man wanted to hurt that girl!"

"Of course I did," Sherman cried. "I thought he was _dead_! I saw the body! Anyone would have hated her enough to-" He forced himself to stop, but not before his voice cracked. When Sherman regained his composure, he tried again. "I hated that girl. But I didn't kill her out of revenge. I wanted to. But I needed her alive. I needed her living and breathing, so that I could present her to the law, to say without a doubt, Jess Harper is no thief. I didn't mean to kill her. I wanted her dead, but at the hands of a jury."

Taylor looked thoughtful. "I see," he said again. "Gentlemen, I have a problem. A girl is dead, and two witnesses out there in my courtroom say Mr. Sherman is her murderer. He says he killed her as well, but that apparently is not the dispute. The dispute is _why_. 

"Up until this moment, I'd believed his insistence that she'd fabricated her story was simply a thin attempt to cover his guilt. However, given the series of coincidences that lead to an equally thin corroboration of his story, a tiny thread of doubt begins to weave itself through the prosecution's case. 

"But it isn't the doubt that gives me the most pause. It is the fact that every claim made by the prosecution has been supposition and speculation, based on the word of a mountainside hermit, and his one connection to the human race, a man whose opinions have likely been swayed by the charms of the victim, while the claims -and rebuttals - made by the defense have been corroborated by a lawman whose record was sufficiently impressive to myself that I was willing to extend this hearing by two whole days to hear his live testimony. 

"The end result, gentlemen, is that I find that I am unable to continue with this trial at this time - if Mr. Sherman is guilty, then the prosecution should be able to refute the former Mr. Doe's claims. However, judging by the slack jawed, bug eyed look upon Mr. Prescott's face, I can only assume that there is no such rebuttal to be had. Therefore, I am informing you gentlemen, that I intend to dismiss this case with prejudice, and to allow Mr. Sherman to return to his ranch in Wyoming. Please join me in the court room, so that I may dismiss the gallery and close the case, gentlemen."

"Wait," Sherman said. "What about the strong box? Will the money be returned to the stage line?"

"You seem awfully interested in that money, Sherman," Prescott said blandly.

"That money belongs to the stage line - or, rather, to the men who work for the company. That money was a company payroll, and there are probably several families who desperately need those funds." Sherman turned to the judge. "Your Honor, please. If you aren't comfortable putting the funds in Sheriff Cory's care, then telegraph the company, ask them to send a man to collect the funds. It belongs to the company."

Taylor smiled slightly. "I can see why Sheriff Cory insists you're well loved in Laramie. I'll have one of the deputies contact the Overland Stage Company before sundown, Mr. Sherman, and whatever is left of the stolen funds will be returned as quickly as a representative can come to take them. Now, would you please?" Taylor gestured at the door, and everyone filed out to the courtroom in silence.

The judge wasted no time in disappointing the citizens of Buckeye. "Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for your patience. What was discussed in my chamber is not a matter for public record, and as such, is of little relevance to you, save this one fact: new information has come to light that casts a pall of doubt upon the proceedings, and I cannot in good conscience allow this preliminary hearing to continue. Deputies, release the defendant. This case is dismissed."

The courtroom erupted yet again, and the townspeople looked as if they wanted to riot. At first, the stranger thought the town might swallow Sherman whole (and take him along too), but the deputies were quick to press down the angry mob. Sherman skittered to where the stranger practically cowered under Cory's elbow. "I don't want to stay here another second. Mort, get us out of here."

The stranger didn't understand what special powers Sherman thought Cory might have, but he soon realized that the crowd was more interested in going after the judge than the man who was supposed to be on trial. They slipped through the throng with only a little resistance, and escaped through a side door. The outer hall was empty, and they ran to the nearest stairwell, down to the main entryway, and out to the street. Even then, they didn't stop, until they made it to the stage line office.

Cory ushered them inside. "I'll keep watch until the stage arrives. Besides, I'll bet you two have a few things you want to say to each other."

The stage line clerk came to greet the stranger with a great big smile, but a hard look from Sherman sent him over to keep Cory company instead. The stranger was finally alone with the living, breathing embodiment of the man from his dreams. He didn't know what to say.

"I, uh, I have no idea if our home is even waiting for us, Jess. I wrote a letter to Andy, but I didn't wait for an answer."

The stranger didn't know how to answer that. "Okay."

Sherman smiled sadly. "You really don't remember, do you?"

The stranger shook his head. "I remember your face. And your voice. I didn't recognize it when I first went in the court room. You sounded funny. But now I remember your voice."

"That's good. You remember anything else?"

"Children." When Sherman gave him a blank look, the stranger rushed to explain. "A pair of boys. I can't really think of their faces, but there were two of them. I guess I thought they were us or something. One was dark, one was light."

Sherman began to smile, and his eyes soon filled with tears. "No. Not us. They're grown now - well, Andy is. Mike still has a little more to go, but close enough." He made no attempt to hide the tears he wiped from his eyes. "Anything else? Obviously not Mort."

The stranger looked at the sheriff chatting easily with the clerk, even while keeping his eyes firmly on the street outside. "I think I might owe him a lot of money. He bought these clothes."

"Don't worry about that. He's a good friend. We'll settle with him when we can." A feather light touch brushed against the stranger's chin. "Hey, look at me, Jess." He did. "I'm not sure why you said what you said in the judge's chambers-"

"Which part?"

Sherman sighed. "About being good friends, but not being engaged. I just... I want you to know, it doesn't matter if you never remember what we were to each other, I'm always going to be your partner - in whatever way you need me to be."

The stranger closed his eyes, and thought of that brilliant, laughing face from his dreams. When he opened them again, the face was the same, but the shine was gone. Was it just a dream that made him seem so glorious? Or was it the loss of something dear?

Damn it all to hell, anyway. What was the use of living, if a man couldn't _feel_? The stranger grabbed hold of Sherman's hand and squeezed it. "I've been dreaming of you, since I first lost myself. I didn't know you were real. But you are, and you've risked everything for me, and for no reason other than to honor my memory. I might not know the little pieces, but I _know_ what we are to each other. Don't ever doubt that for a minute." Warmth bloomed in his chest as he watched Sherman melt at his words. He wanted desperately to wrap his arms around Sherman's shoulders, to taste his lips, his jaw, his neck. But he didn't dare tempt fate, not while he was still in the meanest town in the west. Instead, he just smiled at Sherman, and relished the knowledge that there was still comfort to be had somewhere in this world.


	26. Stranger No More

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to take a minute thank everyone who'd taken the time to read my little novel, and I'd like to particularly thank those of you who left all the lovely comments and kudos. It's been a wonderful time stepping into infiniterider's vision of the boys, and I hope to one day revisit them, whether here after they've become empty (and full again) nesters, or some point earlier in their relationship. I hope the ending is as sweet to read as it was to finally, finally write. Enjoy!

The landscape unfurled beneath the coach, a never ending ribbon of dirt road and clear sky. The stranger watched the world pass through the window, and was grateful not to be in the same harsh company he'd been keeping since his rescue in the Ward's barn. There were three other people on the stage with them, folks who were already aboard when they'd left Sheriff Cory behind in Buckeye. They were cordial enough when Sherman had dragged the stranger aboard behind him, but the group was insular, and made no small talk at all.

For that, the stranger was grateful - they were both too tired to engage in any social niceties, and neither of them was quite ready to believe that the ordeal was over. Sherman tried to keep careful watch of the road at first, probably afraid that the law in Buckeye would reach out a long, vindictive arm, and snatch them back into the maw of twisted justice if he didn't personally see to their unfettered escape. The stranger couldn't blame him - he understood that kind of fear, and half expected the same. But he could also understand the bone-deep weariness that came from being caged with no hope for salvation. So when Sherman's eyelids began to droop, the stranger decided to keep quiet watch over both the dusty trail that spun out behind them, and the slumbering giant before him.

When the stagecoach paused in the good Reverend Cady's town, the stranger resisted the urge to get off and give the tightwad, penny pinching townies in Cheyenne a piece of his mind. He kept his peace, and decided to leave it in the hands of fate and the good lord above. He was was equally unwilling to alight when they stopped in Laramie, though he was certainly curious about the town that caused him and Sherman so much grief. But Sherman had made it clear when they'd bought their fare - there was nothing in town for him, no reason to stop. So the stranger bit down on his curiosity and sat stiffly in the stagecoach while they picked up a mail parcel. The stranger wouldn't make Sherman face the folks who'd let him down, not until he was damned good and ready to.

Soon, they were on the road again, a dusty dirt road which surely became lush and green and something vaguely familiar. He'd never been so far north before, not since the Wards. But all the same, there was a mix of calm and excitement that filled him, both a wild giddiness, and soothing sense of peace. He sat up and watch with budding excitement as the stagecoach sped through the forest, and began to take in a long, gentle curve.

He'd have let Sherman sleep until they reached Canada, but he saw a sign as the road bent - 12 Mile House, Sherman Ranch Relay. The stage soon began to slow, and the trees suddenly cleared away to reveal a modest looking ranch house tucked away against the bottom of a dusty hill. The stranger reached out and shook Sherman's knee. "Hey. Hey, wake up."

The stage ground to a stop in front of the ranch house, and the thunderous sound of hooves on hard packed dirt soon gave way to impatient knickering and snuffling, and the creak of wood as the driver dismounted. The sudden stop jerked everyone in the cab just the littlest bit - except Sherman, who'd slept through the warning, and hadn't braced himself for the stop. He jerked forward, the whole front of his body landing squarely against the stranger's chest. There were gasps from the other passengers, but the stranger just held onto Sherman's shoulders. "Hey,"he said again softly. "You know anything about a twelve mile house?"

Sherman sat straight up, red faced, and scrambled back in his seat. "Why do you a-"He cut himself short when the door was nearly yanked off its hinges. 

The driver stuck his head in. "Just a brief stop after your stint in Laramie, folks! We're gonna change the team and check the wagon, so there'll be a real quick layover here. Go on inside, I smell a pot of hot coffee waiting, and a pot full of stew if you're hungry!"

The other passengers scrambled off the stage, talking quietly amongst themselves about the wild beauty of the land, and the stark difference between this house in the middle of nowhere, and the near gentrification of Laramie and every other town like it. The stranger just sat there, watching Sherman, who watched the passengers, the driver, even the brawny young man with bright yellow hair that lead a pair of overworked horses to the corral by the barn.

"What's wrong, Sher- Slim?"

Sherman jerked his attention from the youth working with the horses, and gave the stranger a sharp look. "You don't know where we are, do you?"

"The sign said 12 Mile House, Sherman Ranch Relay."

Sherman's face grew wistful. "Yes, Jess. But that doesn't mean anything to you, does it?"

The stranger raised his eyebrows slowly. "The name is Sherman. It's the closest relay to Laramie. I assume we live here?"

Sherman's face turned hard again. "Maybe. Maybe they just kept the name."

It was the stranger's turn to frown. "What, this fella here ain't your kin?"

"I don't know that man,"Sherman said roughly.

"Well, maybe he's a new hand. You've been gone a spell, ain't you?"

Rather than answer, Sherman shoved past the stranger and jumped down to the ground. "You there!"He began to stalk towards the young man with balled fists and a set jaw.

The stranger could just hear the young ranch hand's curt answer from his seat in the stage. "The food's inside the..."The hand trailed off as he looked hard at Sherman, before finally asking, "Slim?"

Sherman stopped just shy of the corral gate, but he didn't speak. The hand slowly walked towards the gate, staring at Sherman with deep intensity. The stranger wasn't sure of what to make of any of the scene, but he was half afraid Sherman was fixing to fight for this land. He didn't want Sherman to wind up back in the clink, not when they could just find somewhere else to start their lives again. He got down from the stage as quietly as he could, and headed for the pair facing off at the corral.

As he got closer, the stranger could see the young man's freckled face more clearly, and realized that the young man really was just a boy, probably just starting to sprout whiskers. His body might have been broad and hardened by long days of tough work and good food, but there was a sweet simpleness in the face that said this boy was no threat. So, then, why the stand off?

"Slim?"The boy had gone breathy, and his face soon changed from guarded confusion to pure joy. "You're okay?"

Sherman too began relax his stance, and he cocked his head to one side. "Mike... Williams?"

"Slim!"The boy closed the gap between them in two bounding steps, launching himself over the coral gate at Sherman's neck. They went tumbling to the ground, like a pair of frolicsome lion cubs. The sounds of exasperated pain and unbridled joy filled the air and echoed off the hill to the north. 

The stranger paused, suddenly bereft of a mission. Jealousy tightened his chest, though he couldn't why. Possessiveness for Sherman? Desire for such a warm welcome for himself? The realization that Sherman didn't need his protection after all, and likely wouldn't ever again?

Before the stranger could give solid thought to the emotions bubbling inside him, the boy, Mike, turned a suddenly wary eye on him. For a split second, the boy looked ferocious. Nothing and no one would come between him and his reunion with... whoever it was Sherman was to him.

And then the clouds cleared, and radiant sunshine burst forth from the boy. _"Jess Harper!"_

In an instant, Mike was on his feet, scrambling towards the stranger like a runaway mustang. The stranger stood there, locked in place by shock and confusion, and then he was one of the tumbling lion cubs, embraced by a boy a good half head shorter than him, and almost half again his own body weight. "You're alive, you're alive, you're alive,"Mike chanted, over and over.

 _"What in the Sam Hill is all this ruckus?"_ A door slammed, back and forth, as someone stalked from the side of the house. "So help me if you're out here fight- _Slim!_ "

Mike scrambled off the stranger, and they watched as Sherman raced towards the house, towards the outstretched arms of another tall, dark haired man. The stranger tamped down on the surge of jealousy that rushed him - maybe this new man would be happy to see him too.

And then he was on his feet, his arm dang near pulled out of the shoulder socket from the sheer force of Mike Williams'enthusiasm, and being dragged to the teary eyed reunion. "Look, Andy, _look!_ "

The newcomer pulled his face from the crook of Sherman's shoulder, and the stranger gave a slight start. Though his hair and eyes were dark, the resemblance was uncanny - this was another Sherman, to be sure. And he was looking at the stranger with tears in his eyes. "I don't understand,"he said, his voice shaking. He turned to Sherman - to Slim Sherman - and said, "I thought... your letter..."

"I was wrong, Andy."And then Slim reached out and pulled the stranger to his side, tucking him under his wing. He looked up at the house, his face twisted between a grin and a sob. "I was wrong about a lot of things."Then he looked at Mike, and back to the man wearing his face. "I see you found Mike."

"He's only been here a couple weeks - I had to hire a man from Pinkerton's to find him, but I did. Good thing too - the folks from town aren't too much for ranching anymore these days, and I wanted someone I could trust to help me out, not a drifter."

The stranger stiffened a little. He felt a reasssuring squeeze on his shoulder, and Slim said with a laugh, "As I recall, you didn't used to have a problem taking in strays."

"He still likes strays,"Mike said. "Just yesterday we went and got us a-"

"Not now, Mike,"Andy said smoothly. "And anyway, there's a world of difference between strays and drifters. Drifters come and go. Strays get lost, until they find their home."He looked at the stranger fondly, and reached out to tug his sleeve. "Right, pardner?"

The stranger didn't know what to say. He realized he'd hesitated too long when Andy and Mike shared a look, and the happiness on their faces dimmed a little. 

"Boys, um... Jess has something going on in his noggin that's a little different from what we're used to. He's gonna need some time to adjust to things."Slim sighed and tugged the stranger in a little tighter. "Come on. There's passengers in the house, and we're covered from head to to in trail dust like you wouldn't believe. I want to know how you managed to save the ranch, and I've got some things to tell you two - things about Jess, and me, and that... woman."

Mike went off to finish with the horses, and Andy went back inside to tend to the alarmed passengers. The stranger could just hear them clucking like a bunch of hens as the door swung open and shut. Slim stood staring at the house, like he couldn't believe it was still standing. 

Kind of the way he'd stared at the stranger when he'd first seen him in the courtroom in Buckeye.

The stranger looked at the house, too. He'd hoped that if he'd ever gotten back home, that he'd be barreled over by a whole slew of memories. He'd assumed he'd at least get a tingle of familiarity. But so far all he had was the beginning of some new bruises from Mike's enthusiastic greeting, and disappointment that there wasn't more memory for him.

"You okay?"Slim was no longer staring at the house, but looking at the stranger with some concern.

The stranger shrugged. "Guess I thought it'd be more familiar to me."

Slim looked concerned. "It might take time, Jess."

"It might not come back at all."

"It might not."Slim's smile was small and wistful. "Hey. Mike might need help with those horses. I'm gonna see-"

"No,"the stranger said. "No, go help Andy. I'll help Mike."Before Slim could protest, the stranger turned and practically ran to the corral.

"Hiya, Jess,"Mike said with a smile, though he wasn't so bright as before. 

"Hi, Mike."The stranger paused. He turned his face away and mouthed the words again. _Hi, Mike._ He half expected to see a small boy covered in mud and trailing a dog, two raccoons and squirrel behind him. But when he turned back, it was the same broad shouldered man-child who'd slammed him into the dirt. "So... what did you hide in the barn?"

Mike's grin was big and wild again, and for a second, the stranger was afraid of getting rammed to the ground once more. But Mike channeled that energy into hitching horses and checking the wagon, and telling the stranger about the _two_ mama cats and their horde of bouncing, rolling, running kittens that was making life damn near impossible for the poor horses.

By the time Mike finished telling him about the one night he and Andy had foolishly tried to save the horses sanity by bringing the cats into the house, tears of laughter were rolling down the stranger's face, and he was holding his still tender wound with both hands. He hadn't hurt so much there in a long time. The pain felt good.

While he was still chuckling, the passengers filed out of the house, talking animatedly amongst themselves, and promising to stop in again on the newly reunited Sherman brothers. They had a kind word for Mike, too. But then they stopped to look curiously at the stranger. He never ate! Would the stage be terribly late if they bought him something for the road?

"Oh, no, folks,"Slim said, and his rich voice had a warmth to it never heard in Buckeye. "This here is Jess Harper. He bought into the ranch when we sent Andy here off to school. Andy's a part owner by blood, but Jess is a part owner by ink."

"And sweat,"Andy said.

"And heart!"Mike chimed in.

Again, the stranger didn't know what to say. The passengers all grew quiet again, but the quality of the silence wasn't like it had been when they were stuck on the stage together, separate souls brought together by the coincidence of travel. This time, they seemed thoughtful, respectful. Finally, one of the ladies turned to Slim. "That's why he watched you so while you slept. He probably wanted to make sure he brought you back to your boys in one piece. My husband's partner was the same way. Worst day of his life, the day he came to tell me my Martin wouldn't be coming home to me anymore."She patted the stranger's hand. "Well, Mr. Harper, you can go inside and have your supper in peace, now. The family's all together again."

"Yes, we are,"the stranger said quietly, and moved to stand in the shadow of the stagecoach. He could just see the younger men helping the passengers onto the stage, but he saw Slim watching him with narrowed eyes. 

Then the driver was in the seat, the stage began to move, and a plume of dust kicked up as the fresh team of horses began their journey northwest. The three men of the house filled the vacuum left in the wake of the stagecoach. Slim spoke first. "We can talk to Mort when he gets back to town about whatever money you think you might owe him. Andy told me he sold his house in St. Louis to cover the mortgage. We're in the black again."

"Why would Jess owe the sheriff money?"

"It's a long, ugly story, Mike,"Slim said. "Mostly his to tell, when he's ready. But the short answer is, Jess needed some things, and Mort took care of the bill."

"I'm not gonna be happy to see him retire,"Andy muttered. "He's making noises about that, you know..."

"I'll just bet,"Slim grumbled. "What he didn't make any noise about was you being here, taking care of the ranch for me. I half expected the place to be razed to the ground, to make room for a hotel or something! I don't know why Mort didn't tell me everything was okay - could have saved me a lot of worrying!"

"You didn't ask, Slim,"the stranger said. "You just got on the stagecoach and hauled me in after you, and hang the rest!"

The three of them stared at him, before bursting into laughter.

"What's so funny?"

"Oh boy,"Mike said, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.

"He don't need no adjustment time,"Andy said.

Slim shook his head and ruffled the top of the stranger's head. "That was a classic Jess answer. _You're_ what's so funny!"He turned to the others. "Come on, I'm bushed. I want to lay on the couch and get waited on hand and foot."They started to go inside.

The stranger stared in stunned silence at the three men headed for the front door. They weren't the right sizes, not anymore, but he could see it, clear as day. The two boys from the dream, laughing and playing at the foot of the golden man whose laughter filled the sky. The stranger thought his chest might burst open as finally, _finally_ , familiarity settled on him. It wasn't a great surge of memory, and the pieces didn't all lock perfectly into place, but for the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt comfortable.

Slim ushered the boys in ahead of him, and paused on the porch. "Jess? You okay?"

Jess smiled at him, slow but certain. "Yeah, Slim. I'm good. I was just thinking, it's good to be home."


End file.
